Julia Yost

A great literary character, like a gemstone, has many facets. Sherlock Holmes looks different depending on where the light hits him: reasoning machine or bohemian creative, misogynist or white knight, disciplined professional or (in Dr. Watson’s words) “self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.” Film adaptations, of which there are no end, pick and choose their angles. Purists rush to tell us which onscreen Holmeses are valid and which travesty Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Occasionally the purists themselves betray Holmes, who had more going on than they recall. As for me, I’m purer than the purists. But when it comes to onscreen Sherlocks, I’m one big soft spot. Even by my liberal standards, Amazon’s recent streaming series Young Sherlock fails.

Jane Austen was born in Hampshire on December 16, 1775, the seventh child of a poor country rector. Despite being red-cheeked and a good dancer, she never married. And despite the handful of novels she wrote under the byline “A Lady,” she was always considered by her family less promising than her older sister. She died of a painful illness at 41. Her books found a readership that included the Prince Regent, but she had some prominent detractors. Charlotte Brontë scorned them: “I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.” Where were the windswept moors, the big feelings? In the next century, D.H. Lawrence dismissed Austen as “mean” and “snobbish.