Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) "Rathbone "was" Sherlock Holmes". The choice of Nigel Bruce as Watson was more contentious, with Davies pointing out that "Bruce's characterisation bore little relation" to the written Watson, even though the portrayal eventually produced "an endearingly avuncular figure". The historian David Parkinson agrees, and wrote that Bruce's "avuncular presence provided the perfect counterbalance to Rathbone's briskly omniscient sleuth". Barnes notes that, despite the criticisms against him, Bruce rehabilitated Watson, who had been a marginal figure in the cinematic Holmes canon to that point: "after Bruce, it would be a near-unthinkable heresy to show Holmes without him". With the combination of
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes together and published as a book, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" on 14 October 1892 by George Newnes, the publisher of "The Strand Magazine". The initial print run of the book was for 10,000 copies in the United Kingdom, and a further 4,500 copies in the United States, which were published by Harper Brothers the following day. All of the stories within "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" are told in a first-person narrative from the point of view of Dr. Watson, as is the case for all but four of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography"