[A_Match_and_a_Cigarette]

So, I went down to collect the morning's post at work today, and saw the usual edition of the Sunday Times book supplement in my boss's in-tray...with a review of 2 new ACD books. I begged it off her when she'd finished with it, and spent a nice relaxing tea-break reading the article.

The online source is here, but as I've had some problems with accessing Times book reviews in the past, I've cut-and-pasted the whole lot below. Enjoy.

The Sunday Times - August 26, 2007
Outwitted by his own creation
John Carey reviews two books detailing the life of the man behind Britain's supersleuth Sherlock Holmes

Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes by Andrew Lycett Weidenfeld

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters edited by Daniel Stashower, Jon Lellenberg and Charles Foley

Holmes: “Notice, Watson, that gentleman ascending the steps of the Reform Club.” Watson: “You mean the stout party in the Harris Tweed suit? Looks pretty ordinary to me.” Holmes: “Your powers of observation remain sadly embryonic, Watson. He is far from ordinary. He is entangled in an amorous liaison with a younger woman, while his wife lies mortally ill; he has amassed a large fortune by writing sensational fiction, and he believes in fairies.” Watson: “Great heavens, Holmes!”

Unfortunately, there is no record of Sherlock Holmes ever catching sight of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but had he done so his diagnosis would probably have been along these lines. He would not, we can be sure, have envied Doyle, whereas Doyle envied him, and understandably. Soon after the first Sherlock Holmes stories appeared, sacks of fan mail began to arrive requesting the great detective’s help, and when Doyle killed him off, at the end of the second series, by dispatching him over the Reichenbach Falls, clerks in the city of London donned black armbands. This was galling to Doyle, who aspired to be a great historical novelist, and thought the Holmes stories beneath him. However, nothing else he wrote made serious money, so he was forced to resurrect his hated rival, and continued to chronicle his adventures almost to his dying day.

They were opposites in virtually every respect. Doyle was superstitious, Holmes austerely rational. Holmes collected rare violins, Doyle played the banjo. Doyle was a failed doctor, Holmes a pioneering forensic scientist. The mind blanks out at the notion of Holmes playing team games, but

The biggest difference was their relations with women. Holmes avoided them altogether, but Doyle was entirely dependent on the love of the opposite sex, and regarded it as a right. The “great female destiny”, he said, was “to become the supplement of a man”. This ought to provide women with adequate fulfilment, in his view, and he mocked the idea of their receiving higher education or having the vote. When his first wife, Touie, contracted TB, and could no longer be a sufficiently active supplement, he took up with a young singer, Jean Leckie, marrying her when Touie died nine years later. But his most intimate bond was with his bossy and flirta-tious mother (“Mam”), and his letters to her might well have raised Holmes’s (and would certainly have raised Watson’s) eyebrows. Few middle-aged married men, even in the mother-worshipping Victorian era, can have written that they were “longing to kiss my dear mother once more”, or have inquired dotingly, “Was there ever such a love story as ours since the world began?”

It was from Mam that he derived his chivalric ideals. He boasted to her about the “bastings” he dealt out to various foes, and about his manly delight in bloodshed. As ship’s surgeon on an Arctic whaling trip during his time as a trainee doctor, he sent home a jubilant account of a seal hunt (“The mothers are shot and the little ones have their brains knocked out with spiked clubs”), enclosing a sketch of himself armed with “a long gory poleaxe”. Evidently Mam could be counted on to receive this with pride and pleasure. Treating killing as fun chimed with the glorification of war as a great male game. Doyle found thinking and writing about battle exciting, though he never actually ventured into the firing line. He was a newspaper correspondent during Britain’s military expedition in Sudan, and went to South Africa with a field hospital in the Boer war.

When the first world war began he was 55, and had to content himself with a brief fact-finding visit to the trenches, clad resplendently in his deputy lord lieutenant’s uniform. By this time it had become horribly apparent that war was not a game. At the start he had struck his usual “hearty, manly, patriotic” note, assuring Mam of war’s “nobility”, predicting that Europe would be “the better” for it, and writing a stirring call to arms for the newly founded Propaganda Bureau. But as thousands of young men marched to the slaughter, his confidence dwindled. His son Kingsley was wounded at the Somme and died in the 1918 flu pandemic, as did his young brother Innes.

Doyle had long been interested in spiritualism, attending seances since his twenties, and it now became his obsession. It was as if he felt that he could atone for his lethal warmongering only by preaching that death was “a most glorious improvement upon life”. After the war, he toured America and Australia, expounding spiritualism to vast audiences. He was hailed as the St Paul of the new religion, and he foretold that it would eclipse all other sects from the Roman Catholic church to the Salvation Army. The departed were in constant communication with him, and brought him comforting news of welfare arrangements in the beyond, as well as apologies for having doubted spiritualism while they were alive. When two girls from Cottingley in Yorkshire claimed they had photographed fairies (one of them admitted later it was a hoax) he was gladly credulous, since it confirmed his belief in the other world. He used to sit in the woods near his home, playing a musical box, camera at the ready, in hope that the wee folk would materialise.

Laughing at all this is easy, but also uneasy. For it is arguable that his spiritualist message was his greatest gift to humanity. It brought comfort to millions of bereaved parents, wives and children; compared to that, the question of whether it was true or not seems insignificant. From this angle the last phase of his life acquires a tragic grandeur that Andrew Lycett’s excellent biography brings out. Comprehensive and authoritative, it is undoubtedly the best account of Doyle to date, and the best we are likely to get. For the archive, Lycett tells us, was carefully weeded out by the Doyle family after his death, so the truth on some issues is now irrecoverable.

This in itself makes telling his life through his letters a dubious enterprise and, as Daniel Stashower, Jon Lellenberg and Charles Foley admit, many important aspects of his life are not mentioned in the letters. Besides, Doyle was not a great letter writer – not remotely in, say, the Charles Dickens or Evelyn Waugh class. Nearly all those printed here are to Mam, and whatever joy they brought her they hold little for the general reader. Trudging through them makes one grateful that Holmes restricted his correspondence to the occasional telegram to a foreign police force.

[Professor Challenger]

A_Match_and_a_Cigarette, on Aug 29 2007, 12:29 PM, said:

So, I went down to collect the morning's post at work today, and saw the usual edition of the Sunday Times book supplement in my boss's in-tray...with a review of 2 new ACD books. I begged it off her when she'd finished with it, and spent a nice relaxing tea-break reading the article.

The online source is here, but as I've had some problems with accessing Times book reviews in the past, I've cut-and-pasted the whole lot below. Enjoy.

The Sunday Times - August 26, 2007
Outwitted by his own creation
John Carey reviews two books detailing the life of the man behind Britain's supersleuth Sherlock Holmes

Conan Doyle: The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes by Andrew Lycett Weidenfeld

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters edited by Daniel Stashower, Jon Lellenberg and Charles Foley

Holmes: “Notice, Watson, that gentleman ascending the steps of the Reform Club.” Watson: “You mean the stout party in the Harris Tweed suit? Looks pretty ordinary to me.” Holmes: “Your powers of observation remain sadly embryonic, Watson. He is far from ordinary. He is entangled in an amorous liaison with a younger woman, while his wife lies mortally ill; he has amassed a large fortune by writing sensational fiction, and he believes in fairies.” Watson: “Great heavens, Holmes!”

Unfortunately, there is no record of Sherlock Holmes ever catching sight of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but had he done so his diagnosis would probably have been along these lines. He would not, we can be sure, have envied Doyle, whereas Doyle envied him, and understandably. Soon after the first Sherlock Holmes stories appeared, sacks of fan mail began to arrive requesting the great detective’s help, and when Doyle killed him off, at the end of the second series, by dispatching him over the Reichenbach Falls, clerks in the city of London donned black armbands. This was galling to Doyle, who aspired to be a great historical novelist, and thought the Holmes stories beneath him. However, nothing else he wrote made serious money, so he was forced to resurrect his hated rival, and continued to chronicle his adventures almost to his dying day.

They were opposites in virtually every respect. Doyle was superstitious, Holmes austerely rational. Holmes collected rare violins, Doyle played the banjo. Doyle was a failed doctor, Holmes a pioneering forensic scientist. The mind blanks out at the notion of Holmes playing team games, but

The biggest difference was their relations with women. Holmes avoided them altogether, but Doyle was entirely dependent on the love of the opposite sex, and regarded it as a right. The “great female destiny”, he said, was “to become the supplement of a man”. This ought to provide women with adequate fulfilment, in his view, and he mocked the idea of their receiving higher education or having the vote. When his first wife, Touie, contracted TB, and could no longer be a sufficiently active supplement, he took up with a young singer, Jean Leckie, marrying her when Touie died nine years later. But his most intimate bond was with his bossy and flirta-tious mother (“Mam”), and his letters to her might well have raised Holmes’s (and would certainly have raised Watson’s) eyebrows. Few middle-aged married men, even in the mother-worshipping Victorian era, can have written that they were “longing to kiss my dear mother once more”, or have inquired dotingly, “Was there ever such a love story as ours since the world began?”

It was from Mam that he derived his chivalric ideals. He boasted to her about the “bastings” he dealt out to various foes, and about his manly delight in bloodshed. As ship’s surgeon on an Arctic whaling trip during his time as a trainee doctor, he sent home a jubilant account of a seal hunt (“The mothers are shot and the little ones have their brains knocked out with spiked clubs”), enclosing a sketch of himself armed with “a long gory poleaxe”. Evidently Mam could be counted on to receive this with pride and pleasure. Treating killing as fun chimed with the glorification of war as a great male game. Doyle found thinking and writing about battle exciting, though he never actually ventured into the firing line. He was a newspaper correspondent during Britain’s military expedition in Sudan, and went to South Africa with a field hospital in the Boer war.

When the first world war began he was 55, and had to content himself with a brief fact-finding visit to the trenches, clad resplendently in his deputy lord lieutenant’s uniform. By this time it had become horribly apparent that war was not a game. At the start he had struck his usual “hearty, manly, patriotic” note, assuring Mam of war’s “nobility”, predicting that Europe would be “the better” for it, and writing a stirring call to arms for the newly founded Propaganda Bureau. But as thousands of young men marched to the slaughter, his confidence dwindled. His son Kingsley was wounded at the Somme and died in the 1918 flu pandemic, as did his young brother Innes.

Doyle had long been interested in spiritualism, attending seances since his twenties, and it now became his obsession. It was as if he felt that he could atone for his lethal warmongering only by preaching that death was “a most glorious improvement upon life”. After the war, he toured America and Australia, expounding spiritualism to vast audiences. He was hailed as the St Paul of the new religion, and he foretold that it would eclipse all other sects from the Roman Catholic church to the Salvation Army. The departed were in constant communication with him, and brought him comforting news of welfare arrangements in the beyond, as well as apologies for having doubted spiritualism while they were alive. When two girls from Cottingley in Yorkshire claimed they had photographed fairies (one of them admitted later it was a hoax) he was gladly credulous, since it confirmed his belief in the other world. He used to sit in the woods near his home, playing a musical box, camera at the ready, in hope that the wee folk would materialise.

Laughing at all this is easy, but also uneasy. For it is arguable that his spiritualist message was his greatest gift to humanity. It brought comfort to millions of bereaved parents, wives and children; compared to that, the question of whether it was true or not seems insignificant. From this angle the last phase of his life acquires a tragic grandeur that Andrew Lycett’s excellent biography brings out. Comprehensive and authoritative, it is undoubtedly the best account of Doyle to date, and the best we are likely to get. For the archive, Lycett tells us, was carefully weeded out by the Doyle family after his death, so the truth on some issues is now irrecoverable.

This in itself makes telling his life through his letters a dubious enterprise and, as Daniel Stashower, Jon Lellenberg and Charles Foley admit, many important aspects of his life are not mentioned in the letters. Besides, Doyle was not a great letter writer – not remotely in, say, the Charles Dickens or Evelyn Waugh class. Nearly all those printed here are to Mam, and whatever joy they brought her they hold little for the general reader. Trudging through them makes one grateful that Holmes restricted his correspondence to the occasional telegram to a foreign police force.

I'm not sure about any of you, but personally I think that if John Carey were within a few feet of me, rather than hiding behind several columns of newsprint, I'd break his sneering, pompous, jeering moronic little neck. That's only my first reaction, of course. If I got to thinking about it, I'm sure that I would turn really nasty.

[Brain]

Thanks for posting, Match!

[A_Match_and_a_Cigarette]

Don't shoot the messenger, Prof!

[Professor Challenger]

A_Match_and_a_Cigarette, on Aug 31 2007, 02:02 AM, said:

Don't shoot the messenger, Prof!

I wasn't going to shoot anyone....I was going to strangle him!

[A_Match_and_a_Cigarette]

Professor Challenger, on Aug 31 2007, 10:10 PM, said:

I wasn't going to shoot anyone....I was going to strangle him!

No, I meant me!

[Professor Challenger]

A_Match_and_a_Cigarette, on Aug 31 2007, 03:15 PM, said:

No, I meant me!

Why should I want to strangle you. Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha he he he he ha haha haha haha haha haha!!! (evil laugh)

Don't worry, I'm a professor!

[ScarletSherlock]

That author sounds like a total jackass who has issues of his own.

[Wens]

ScarletSherlock, on Aug 31 2007, 04:46 PM, said:

That author sounds like a total jackass who has issues of his own.

How? I hardly read it that way. I would say that it's not a very good review in that I'd have preferred it to be a bit more thorough instead of a general overview of Doyle's life and a few scant comparisons to his famous creation before coming to an analysis that is woefully short, but I hardly saw it as "sneering." Heck, not even the tone of that review struck me as such!

He was hardly "sneering" at Doyle. In fact, I thought he was rather sympathetic.

I think Carey rightly points out the difficulties of Daniel Stashower writing "a life through letters," particularly if the archive has not been preserved intact and have been weeded through by Doyle's family. He compares Lycett's biography with Stashower's and finds the latter wanting because nearly all of the ones reproduced in that tome are to the Mam: that gives us only a limited view because it draws on almost nothing else.

That's not the author's "issue"; rather he recognizes an aspect of methodology that is highly problematic: incomplete archives can only tell us some things, and that Stashower should have been more careful with the nature of his sources. In other words, Lycett's biography is more comprehensive; Stashower's more limited.

He's hardly arrogant or a "jackass" for pointing any of that out; he's actually just doing his job.

Having actually read Stashower's first biography of Doyle, Teller of Tales, I know that Stashower is not really a scholarly writer of any kind-- given his frustrating disregard of footnotes; he's got some interesting sources, but not being able to see how he's used them is a tad irritating. I should like to see if the Lycett biography is better and more informative.

[Northern Line]

.....Having actually read Stashower's first biography of Doyle, Teller of Tales, I know that Stashower is not really a scholarly writer of any kind-- given his frustrating disregard of footnotes....



So, a lack of exhaustive footnotes -- worthy of a textbook but not in a biography written for the masses disqualifies him as a scholarly writer? Nonsense. Take another look at his CV.

I would say that it's not a very good review in that I'd have preferred it to be a bit more thorough instead of a general overview of Doyle's life.....

It was a review of a book, Wens, not a book-in-progress.

I do agree with you, though, that Carey was fairly balanced, and his observations were nothing new to anyone who has read up on Doyle's life before now.

[ScarletSherlock]

I guess I read it wrong. The review came across to me as kind of mean-spirited and poking fun of Doyle for being obsessed with his "mam". I guess I just didn't read it that closely. It also doesn't make me want to read the book very much though, either--it hardly seems like it's endorsing it.

[Le Chat Noir]

Reading this review deposits me ungraciously in a spot I've long since vacated-- that of a hired reviewer.

It has been my experience for a publication to give you, the writer, some sort of established or unestablished tone around which to write.

I'd like to accord this author with a measure of exemption on that basis, but unfortunately, he who mans the byline shoulders the scorn. I've read biographies of Doyle-- even if I hadn't, I'd find this sort of review adorably laced with animosity. Jealous much, M. Author?

Someone's got a bit of a chip. I find the tone both flippant and childish, disregarding whatever may stand in the way of doubt for that which will best read like the cover of a tabloid.

Pathetic, really. Please, do turn to Ms. Spears and her lot. But spare Louisiana. We've got enough problems, thanks all the same.

ScarletSherlock, I think your original assessment was spot on. Someone's attempting to be clever, and it's falling well short of that aim. I'll also thank him immediately from attempting to replicate Holmes and Watson's voices.

Regarding footnotes, correspondence, or any other aspect of fact-gathering that may come under the auspice of methodology, I'd warrant that this review is as flawed as any other attempt to replicate a life lived, and I'd rather read Doyle's primary documents than be handed this drivel, regardless of the potential "corruption" based on his biased towards Mummy. Give me a break.

"When his first wife, Touie, contracted TB, and could no longer be a sufficiently active supplement, he took up with a young singer, Jean Leckie, marrying her when Touie died nine years later. But his most intimate bond was with his bossy and flirta-tious mother (“Mam”), and his letters to her might well have raised Holmes’s (and would certainly have raised Watson’s) eyebrows"

Someone is gunning to be head writer on "Days of Our Lives." Does Doyle write this in his letters? Somehow I missed that bit in the other biographies...

Chat

[Northern Line]

I think perhaps it's a "cultural thing". This style of review is not uncommon in the UK press. Carey's facts were basically correct. His writing might seem to be OTT, but we're used to that..

Had a leader in The Sun read,

GOTCHA! Conan Doyle Was "Into" Faeries!" I might take exception (and wouldn't be surprised to see that in The Sun...), but Carey's take seemed normal to me.

Your thoughts?

[Le Chat Noir]

Northern Line, on Aug 31 2007, 10:21 PM, said:

I think perhaps it's a "cultural thing". This style of review is not uncommon in the UK press.

It's not uncommon in the US. Personally I find it "trying" too hard-- that is, the review is aimed at either being culturally relevant or deliciously shocking (in the hopes it will attract extra attention) with less concern to sober parsing out of facts.

Regardless of what he thinks of Doyle-- his prose is so purple it's leaving marks.

*slaps self*

c

[Wens]

Northern Line, on Aug 31 2007, 09:10 PM, said:

.....Having actually read Stashower's first biography of Doyle, Teller of Tales, I know that Stashower is not really a scholarly writer of any kind-- given his frustrating disregard of footnotes....

So, a lack of exhaustive footnotes -- worthy of a textbook but not in a biography written for the masses disqualifies him as a scholarly writer? Nonsense. Take another look at his CV.

I would say that it's not a very good review in that I'd have preferred it to be a bit more thorough instead of a general overview of Doyle's life.....

It was a review of a book, Wens, not a book-in-progress.

I do agree with you, though, that Carey was fairly balanced, and his observations were nothing new to anyone who has read up on Doyle's life before now.

When I read Teller of Tales, I did take a look at who Stashower was. Stashower is a freelance journalist. It's not so much that he's "disqualified" for being a journalist as it's not what he does. I did not mean to say that his books are not useful to scholars (I think the general argument of Teller of Tales-- that Doyle's spiritualism must not be seen separately from Sherlock Holmes's rationalism was sound, and the book could act as a good source of leads), but a lack of footnotes does make it frustrating to those who follow standard scholarly practice because of the way he may or may not be using his sources is not as easily apparent (even if he does list them-- and they're fascinating). Furthermore, scholarly practice does revolve around questions that are particular to one disciplinary field or another (and not necessarily the writing of "textbooks"; scholars largely write monographs, and not all of them are "textbooks"). Stashower's works are more labors of love which exist outside of those questions. Perhaps I should've explained further in my earlier post, but this has nothing to do with "qualifications" but the way he chooses to write and for whom.

That he has written a biography does not necessarily mark him as a scholarly writer. Once again, it's how he's written it. It's not the same kind of biography, say, as Nancy Isenberg's recent biography of Aaron Burr, Fallen Founder-- one that could easily speak to both scholars and a mass audience alike, but which does follow standard scholarly practice and does appeal to certain scholarly questions. To be fair, I might well have the same problems with Lycett. I'll have to read both for myself, however.

A review of a book-- or at least the ones I'm used to reading-- are expected to be thorough. Given that "review" means "a critical evaluation, such as of a book or play," to expect a thorough overview of a book, complete with criticism, is hardly unreasonable (more of what Mr. Carey found both of interest and lacking would've told me a bit more about both these books). These need not extend to works only in progress.

Le Chat Noir, on Aug 31 2007, 10:52 PM, said:

Reading this review deposits me ungraciously in a spot I've long since vacated-- that of a hired reviewer.

It has been my experience for a publication to give you, the writer, some sort of established or unestablished tone around which to write.

I'd like to accord this author with a measure of exemption on that basis, but unfortunately, he who mans the byline shoulders the scorn. I've read biographies of Doyle-- even if I hadn't, I'd find this sort of review adorably laced with animosity. Jealous much, M. Author?

Someone's got a bit of a chip. I find the tone both flippant and childish, disregarding whatever may stand in the way of doubt for that which will best read like the cover of a tabloid.

Pathetic, really. Please, do turn to Ms. Spears and her lot. But spare Louisiana. We've got enough problems, thanks all the same.

ScarletSherlock, I think your original assessment was spot on. Someone's attempting to be clever, and it's falling well short of that aim. I'll also thank him immediately from attempting to replicate Holmes and Watson's voices.

Regarding footnotes, correspondence, or any other aspect of fact-gathering that may come under the auspice of methodology, I'd warrant that this review is as flawed as any other attempt to replicate a life lived, and I'd rather read Doyle's primary documents than be handed this drivel, regardless of the potential "corruption" based on his biased towards Mummy. Give me a break.

"When his first wife, Touie, contracted TB, and could no longer be a sufficiently active supplement, he took up with a young singer, Jean Leckie, marrying her when Touie died nine years later. But his most intimate bond was with his bossy and flirta-tious mother (“Mam”), and his letters to her might well have raised Holmes’s (and would certainly have raised Watson’s) eyebrows"

Someone is gunning to be head writer on "Days of Our Lives." Does Doyle write this in his letters? Somehow I missed that bit in the other biographies...

Chat

I read that part about the Mam, too, but I didn't find it flippant. A point of interest, to be sure, but not flippant. I would concede that he may be taking that relationship with the Mam out of context, though.

Why is it so objectionable for Carey to point out that Stashower's biography isn't as good as Lycett's for the reasons he provides, though? I don't think he's seeking to deprive anyone of Doyle's primary documents, given that those who want to read Stashower's book will read it anyway. I may find his review more congenial than you do, but I will nonetheless still read Stashower's book. Carey is right in that what Doyle's family have done to the archives is problematic (independent of Doyle's relationship to the Mam): i.e. what other things may we not get to know about Doyle because most of the letters published are to the Mam? But that doesn't mean that those letters that Stashower has published aren't useful or can't be mined for other things that either Stashower or Carey may have missed.

Reading Carey's review again, I think I can see why people found it objectionable. And yet, I do wonder if he's trying to address what general readers are looking for: for those already familiar with Doyle, the letters, whether almost exclusively to the Mam or not, will be of interest. But, as a general work on Doyle's life, the Lycett biography would be a better one to go with.

As for the other biographies, I don't recall-- how many of them claim to focus on his letters? That may be a reason for why this relationship with the Mam was not mentioned.

ScarletSherlock, on Aug 31 2007, 09:34 PM, said:

I guess I read it wrong. The review came across to me as kind of mean-spirited and poking fun of Doyle for being obsessed with his "mam". I guess I just didn't read it that closely. It also doesn't make me want to read the book very much though, either--it hardly seems like it's endorsing it.

But when someone reviews a book, they're not necessarily endorsing it. People will or will not read a book regardless. What reviews do, however, is to bring certain books to their attention.

[Professor Challenger]

Wens, on Sep 1 2007, 02:21 AM, said:

When I read Teller of Tales, I did take a look at who Stashower was. Stashower is a freelance journalist. It's not so much that he's "disqualified" for being a journalist as it's not what he does. I did not mean to say that his books are not useful to scholars (I think the general argument of Teller of Tales-- that Doyle's spiritualism must not be seen separately from Sherlock Holmes's rationalism was sound, and the book could act as a good source of leads), but a lack of footnotes does make it frustrating to those who follow standard scholarly practice because of the way he may or may not be using his sources is not as easily apparent (even if he does list them-- and they're fascinating). Furthermore, scholarly practice does revolve around questions that are particular to one disciplinary field or another (and not necessarily the writing of "textbooks"; scholars largely write monographs, and not all of them are "textbooks"). Stashower's works are more labors of love which exist outside of those questions. Perhaps I should've explained further in my earlier post, but this has nothing to do with "qualifications" but the way he chooses to write and for whom.

That he has written a biography does not necessarily mark him as a scholarly writer. Once again, it's how he's written it. It's not the same kind of biography, say, as Nancy Isenberg's recent biography of Aaron Burr, Fallen Founder-- one that could easily speak to both scholars and a mass audience alike, but which does follow standard scholarly practice and does appeal to certain scholarly questions. To be fair, I might well have the same problems with Lycett. I'll have to read both for myself, however.

A review of a book-- or at least the ones I'm used to reading-- are expected to be thorough. Given that "review" means "a critical evaluation, such as of a book or play," to expect a thorough overview of a book, complete with criticism, is hardly unreasonable (more of what Mr. Carey found both of interest and lacking would've told me a bit more about both these books). These need not extend to works only in progress.
I read that part about the Mam, too, but I didn't find it flippant. A point of interest, to be sure, but not flippant. I would concede that he may be taking that relationship with the Mam out of context, though.

Why is it so objectionable for Carey to point out that Stashower's biography isn't as good as Lycett's for the reasons he provides, though? I don't think he's seeking to deprive anyone of Doyle's primary documents, given that those who want to read Stashower's book will read it anyway. I may find his review more congenial than you do, but I will nonetheless still read Stashower's book. Carey is right in that what Doyle's family have done to the archives is problematic (independent of Doyle's relationship to the Mam): i.e. what other things may we not get to know about Doyle because most of the letters published are to the Mam? But that doesn't mean that those letters that Stashower has published aren't useful or can't be mined for other things that either Stashower or Carey may have missed.

Reading Carey's review again, I think I can see why people found it objectionable. And yet, I do wonder if he's trying to address what general readers are looking for: for those already familiar with Doyle, the letters, whether almost exclusively to the Mam or not, will be of interest. But, as a general work on Doyle's life, the Lycett biography would be a better one to go with.

As for the other biographies, I don't recall-- how many of them claim to focus on his letters? That may be a reason for why this relationship with the Mam was not mentioned.
But when someone reviews a book, they're not necessarily endorsing it. People will or will not read a book regardless. What reviews do, however, is to bring certain books to their attention.

When I read the review it struck me as mean spirited. It was reviewing the the subject of the biographies rather than the biographies themselves. I've read enough to know the difference. This is just my view, no more and no less. Ultimately It doesn't matter all that much. Newspaper reviews are literally here today and gone tomorrow. Outside this forum, I don't suppose that anyone else is even talking about it!

[Brain]

Just I read Daniel Stashower‘s biography will be the first biography about Arthur Conan Doyle in German and it will be available in autumn 2007.
The first Doyle biography in German ...
I can‘t believe it.
It‘s incredible.
German publishers are living behind the moon.