How does an author deal with a character he created that's more famous than himself? Doyle's relationship with Sherlock Holmes was a challenging one. The Wall Street Journal discusses it.
From the piece...
In the early 1890s, Doyle moved Holmes out of novels and into short stories. It was a commercial decision. In London, the number of magazines was booming. Doyle believed that stories with a recurring character would enjoy an advantage over serialized novels, which turned off readers who missed installments. Moreover, Holmes and his puzzles were a better fit for a shorter form. "Sherlock Holmes was a sprinter, not a distance runner," wrote Daniel Stashower in "Teller of Tales," his biography of Doyle.
The stories were an immediate and astonishing success. Readers lined up at newsstands for each new episode. For two years, Doyle dedicated himself to his brilliant and insufferable hero, receiving ever-higher payments for his efforts. Yet the relentless deadlines soon became a burden. Although each story could be read in a single sitting, Doyle complained that the intricate plots demanded the mental work of novels. He also continued to think they were lowbrow achievements.
By 1893, Doyle had resolved to kill Holmes—"even if I buried my bank account with him," he wrote in his autobiography. He set the scene at Reichenbach Falls, an Alpine cascade in Switzerland. Doyle's editors despaired, but the author felt only relief: "I have been much blamed for doing that gentleman to death, but I hold that it was not murder, but justifiable homicide in self-defense, since, if I had not killed him, he would certainly have killed me."
Finishing off Holmes had the paradoxical effect of breathing life into the franchise. Had Doyle kept churning out mysteries throughout the 1890s, their quality inevitably would have declined—a common fate of series from Doyle's day to now, on both the page and the tube. Instead he observed the showbiz dictum: Always leave 'em wanting more.
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