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The Best of Sherlock Holmes |
(sorted by Number of Listings)
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Story |
Number of Quotes |
Quotes per 10K Words |
Number of Listings |
Listings per 10K Words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Sign of the Four | 6 | 1.4 | 29 | 7 |
| "A Scandal in Bohemia" | 4 | 4.7 | 19 | 22 |
| "The Crooked Man" | 2 | 2.8 | 18 | 25 |
| A Study in Scarlet | 5 | 1.1 | 16 | 4 |
| The Valley of Fear | 3 | 0.5 | 13 | 2 |
| "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" | 3 | 3.1 | 11 | 11 |
| "The Abbey Grange" | 2 | 2.2 | 9 | 10 |
| "Silver Blaze" | 2 | 2.1 | 9 | 9 |
| "The Final Problem" | 2 | 2.8 | 8 | 11 |
| "The Second Stain" | 1 | 1.0 | 8 | 8 |
| "The Copper Beeches" | 1 | 1.0 | 8 | 8 |
| "The Red-Headed League" | 2 | 2.4 | 7 | 9 |
| The Hound of the Baskervilles | 1 | 0.2 | 7 | 1 |
| "A Case of Identity" | 2 | 2.8 | 6 | 9 |
| "Wisteria Lodge" | 2 | 1.7 | 6 | 5 |
| "The Sussex Vampire" | 1 | 1.7 | 5 | 8 |
| "The Devil's Foot" | 2 | 2.0 | 5 | 5 |
| "His Last Bow" | 1 | 1.6 | 4 | 7 |
| "The Five Orange Pips" | 1 | 1.4 | 4 | 5 |
| "The Norwood Builder" | 2 | 2.2 | 4 | 4 |
| "Charles Augustus Milverton" | 1 | 1.5 | 3 | 4 |
| "The Solitary Cyclist" | 1 | 1.3 | 3 | 4 |
| "The Dancing Men" | 1 | 1.0 | 3 | 3 |
| "The Bruce-Partington Plans" | 1 | 0.9 | 3 | 3 |
| "The Naval Treaty" | 1 | 0.8 | 3 | 2 |
| "The Reigate Squires" | 1 | 1.4 | 2 | 3 |
| "The Greek Interpreter" | 1 | 1.4 | 2 | 3 |
| "The Musgrave Ritual" | 1 | 1.3 | 2 | 3 |
| "The Noble Bachelor" | 2 | 2.5 | 2 | 2 |
| "The Missing Three-Quarter" | 2 | 2.5 | 2 | 2 |
| "The Speckled Band" | 1 | 1.0 | 2 | 2 |
| "The Dying Detective" | 1 | 1.7 | 1 | 2 |
| "The Stockbrokers's Clerk" | 1 | 1.5 | 1 | 1 |
| "The Disappearance of Lady..." | 1 | 1.3 | 1 | 1 |
| "The Blue Carbuncle" | 1 | 1.3 | 1 | 1 |
| TOTALS | 62 | nm | 227 | nm |
| AVERAGE | 1.8 | 1.7 | 6.5 | 5.9 |
Notes:
Table is based on citations in Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett or The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Canonical passages appear in the 11th (1937) to 16th (1992) editions of Bartlett and all four editions (1941-1992) of Oxford. The tallies above include items that appear in footnotes to quotations by other people.
Additional details are provided in the monograph "Quoting Sherlock Holmes: Some Observations on the Most Popular Passages" by Randall Stock.
Definitions:
Number of Quotes: number of quotations, where passages with similar or identical wording from different stories are considered different quotations.
Quotes per 10K Words: the number of quotations divided by the number of words in the story.
Number of Listings: the total number of appearances (listings) in editions of Bartlett or Oxford. Thus, a story with one quotation that's listed in 3 editions and another quotation that's listed in 2 editions would have 5 listings.
Listings per 10K Words: the number of listings divided by the number of words in the story.
Story lengths were based on "The Word Length of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" by Charles Lauterbach in The Baker Street Journal, April 1960, pp. 101-4.
Vers. 2.0ax-RN Original work
Copyright ©1999
Randall Stock. All Rights Reserved.