The Red-Headed League

When Watson comes to visit his friend Sherlock Holmes and meets Jabez Wilson for the first time, Watson amuses himself by trying to make deductions about Wilson in imitation of Holmes. But Watson...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story, The Red-Headed League, features his most famous characters-- Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. In this installment of the adventures of Holmes and...

There is a short answer and a long answer to this question. The league was ostensibly a society established by an eccentric rich man that benefited red-headed men by employing them. The league...

One literary device that Arthur Conan Doyle uses in this, and other Sherlock Holmes stories, is characterization. Through the narrator, John Watson, the reader gains a very clear picture of what...

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson have been depicted in many motion pictures and television series over the years. Holmes is invariably portrayed as tall, thin, nervous, sharp-featured, ascetic- and...

In the short story "The Red-Headed League," even the great detective Sherlock Holmes thinks the events that occur to Wilson are bizarre. Holmes even tells Watson they both share a "love of all that...

In terms of their powers of observation, Watson makes many broad observations but is unable to deduce things form them, while Holmes hones in on smaller details and uses those to get a greater...

In “The Red-Headed League” Holmes uses logic to solve a seemingly bizarre case of a man who is given a job copying the encyclopedia because he realizes that the suspects are trying to get the man...

Sherlock Holmes is methodical because he uses evidence he collects to make deductions about the case. He solves the case by observing, and determining the answer from what he observes. Watson is...

Holmes is suspicious of Mr. Wilson's assistant, and so he visits Wilson's shop and pretends to be seeking directions in order to make observations about the assistant's appearance. Before doing so,...

Holmes and Watson listen to Mr. Jabez Wilson tell his story of the Red-Headed League. They both found the story to be fantastic and humorous. However, Sherlock tells Mr. Wilson that his problem...

The key events of the story, in chronological order, are as follows: The City and Suburban Bank gets a shipment of 30,000 gold napoleons. John Clay interviews for a job as assistant to Jabez Wilson...

Like many Sherlock Holmes stories, "The Red Headed League" is a celebration of the human intellect. We see this most notably with Holmes himself. As he does in many stories, Sherlock Holmes is able...

Sherlock Holmes' quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. “Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour,...

When Holmes sets a trap for John Clay and is waiting in the bank's basement strongroom for him to emerge through the flooring, the reader is shown the prize the notorious criminal is after. Mr....

Peter Jones and Mr. Merryweather come into the story as it is nearing a climax. Jones is "the official police agent." He is from Scotland Yard. Mr. Merryweather is chairman of the bank directors....

As one of the earlier Sherlock Holmes mystery stories, "The Red-Headed League" gave author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the opportunity to reveal a greater depth of character for Sherlock Holmes. The...

Sherlock Holmes has a cynical view of human nature that remains unchanged throughout the story "The Red-Headed League." At the beginning of the story, Holmes tells Dr. Watson that "for strange...

Although people who have not read the Sherlock Holmes books carefully, or only watched film versions, may dismiss Watson as bumbling and incompetent, that is not actually the case. Watson is a...

The league ended when the criminal, John Clay, no longer needed Mr. Wilson away from his shop during the day. The Red-Headed League was highly unlikely. It was brought to Mr. Wilson’s attention...

Watson describes Jabez Wilson as having fiery red hair. Arthur Conan Doyle took pains to make it plausible that Wilson would not have heard about the so-called Red-Headed League before his new...

As shown by the quote from the previous educator, Sherlock is making an important distinction between two types of crime. Those which seem extraordinary and complicated, he says, are often the...

The central conflict in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Red-Headed League" is between John Clay and the detective Sherlock Holmes. Clay wants to get away with robbing a bank undiscovered and...

There are many clues. Holmes determines the identity of Wilson's helper through his description:“Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, though he's not short of thirty....

Wilson should have seen that the office of this supposedly important organization established by a millionaire was very sparsely furnished. There was only one room, and nothing in it but one table,...

The answer to your question can be found in detail in the last few pages of the story. It is characteristic of many of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes that the master...

Onomatopoeia refers to the formation of words that imitate sounds. Good examples include "cuckoo," "sizzle," and "bang." You will often hear people referring to the "clinking" of glasses when they...

The solution is entirely satisfactory because Sherlock Holmes not only deduces that John Clay and his accomplice are going to loot the City and Suburban Bank, but he is there on the spot with a...

When Holmes questions Mr. Wilson he learns that his assistant showed him the advertisement, he is not very young, he’s smart, and Wilson can’t pay him as much as he’s worth. When Mr. Wilson shows...

The advertisement itself doesn't give much information about the Red-headed League. It simply says there is an opening which will give a red-headed man a well-paying job doing "nominal," which...

Jabez Wilson is a very thrifty man. As such, he does not subscribe to a newspaper or go out and buy one off a news vendor, although newspapers in those days probably only sold for a penny. Even if...

Most Sherlock Holmes stories begin with Holmes and Watson interviewing a new client, and “The Red-Headed League” is no exception. In this story, Holmes and Watson speak to Jabez Wilson, who has had...

During the interview, Holmes learns that the assistant's name is Vincent Spaulding. That he is around thirty years old. That he has a avid interest in photography and is always diving down into...

Holmes details several "obvious facts," noticing that Watson has been personally unable to deduce anything from his own perusal of Mr. Wilson. He says that Mr. Wilson 1. Has done manual labor at...

Arthur Conan Doyle frequently started his Sherlock Holmes stories with demonstrations of Sherlock Holmes' powers of deduction. In the case involving Jabez Wilson, Holmes explains his deductions...

On the night in question, Holmes and Watson meet with Peter Jones, a police officer, and Mr Merryweather, a bank director, at Baker Street. From there, the four men travel to the vault of Mr...

"The Red-Headed League" is a fairly typical Sherlock Holmes tale in which the narrator, Dr. Watson, sees everything the great detective sees but does not understand his friend's deductions,...

Holmes uses deduction and footwork to solve the mystery of the Red-Headed League. At first, it does not seem as though a crime has been committed at all. The League is so ridiculous, though, that...

Jabez Wilson not only needs money but is characterized as, among other things, a man who deals in money as a pawnbroker and who is very tight with his money. A detective as famous as Sherlock...

Arthur Conan Doyle freely acknowledged that he had gotten his inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes mysteries from Edgar Allan Poe's tales of ratiocination about C. Auguste Dupin, particularly from...

In this story, as in many of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes seems so superior to the police that they barely seem to be engaged in the same profession. That said, Jones actively seeks Holmes'...

First of all, the whole idea of the Red-Headed League was obviously to keep the pawnbroker out of the office for a number of hours each day. He could not leave the little office they placed him,...

In Arthur Conan Doyle's story, the overall tone is suspenseful. Conan Doyle creates suspense on two levels. The reader is drawn in to Jabez Wilson's mystery as he requests Sherlock Holmes's help in...

When Holmes and Watson visit Saxe-Coburg Square, Holmes surprises Watson by beating on the pavement with his walking stick. Later he explains: "I was ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out...

Jabez Wilson finds out about the Red-Headed League through an advertisement which had been placed in the newspaper. This advertisement said that a salary of £4 per week would be payable to members...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle often has his narrator begin his stories with some description of Sherlock Holmes, but in the case of "The Red-Headed League" Watson says very little about Holmes at the...