Sherlock Holmes and risk

An 'automaton'. A 'calculating machine'. Assessments of Sherlock Holmes, both in Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and in critical responses to them have tended to share Doctor Watson's view of the detective as a supremely rational operator whose investigative triumphs depend solely on his capacity to deploy logic in the assessment of evidence. To the contrary, this essay contends that risk, luck, and chance together play a much more significant role in the Holmes canon than has previously been acknowledged. By attending to the various gambles, wagers, bets, and speculations that pepper the novels and stories, as well as to Doyle's accounts of his own personal investments, the essay demonstrates how the Holmes stories participate in a wider re-evaluation of risk in the linked domains of late-Victorian finance and imperial adventuring.