About
The Doyly Planet
Your daily dispatch in your inbox!
The Doyly Planet is a daily newsletter devoted to the worlds of Arthur Conan Doyle and his character Sherlock Holmes.
A newsletter every day
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work extends far beyond the adventures of his detective, and the world that has grown around Sherlock Holmes for almost a century and a half has reached a scale unlike anything else in literature. Only a daily publication such as The Doyly Planet can hope to document and explore this extraordinary phenomenon as it continues to evolve.
Each issue focuses on a story, a character, an event, an adaptation, a document, an illustration, a place, a curiosity or a scholarly study relating to Conan Doyle’s life and work. Some subjects are famous; others are little known, or even unknown, including to specialists around the world. Together, they enrich literary history, the author’s biography and popular culture.
Much more than Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes naturally occupies an important place in The Doyly Planet, but the newsletter also ventures far beyond Baker Street. It explores Arthur Conan Doyle’s life, his family, his other fictional characters, his historical and non-fiction writings, his public activities, and the many ways in which his work has been interpreted, adapted, renewed, extended and revisited.
Entertainment, through film, television, radio, theatre and games, on the one hand; culture, through books, illustration and academic research, on the other; not forgetting collecting and the devotion surrounding the character, with all its eccentricities, where humour and self-mockery remain part of the DNA of Holmesian culture: all these activities belong to the wider Doylean movement, sometimes surprising the general public and even the enthusiasts themselves who take part in one or another of these practices inspired by the writer.
Newsletters that enrich a database on a daily basis
The Doyly Planet is designed not only as a newsletter to be read today, but also as an archive to be explored tomorrow. Every published issue joins the searchable collection on the website, allowing subscribers to return to earlier subjects and discover the connections between them.
Over time, this daily format is building a chronological collection of concise explorations devoted to Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and the remarkable cultural world surrounding them. Each issue is another stone added to a growing structure, bringing new entries to a constantly expanding reference work, equipped with a search engine so that no piece of information need ever be forgotten.
For curious readers
The Doyly Planet is intended for long-time enthusiasts, casual readers and anyone who simply wishes to discover something new about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. No previous knowledge is required: every issue stands on its own, while also opening the door to deeper exploration.
Who publishes The Doyly Planet?
The Doyly Planet is an initiative by Thierry Saint-Joanis and Alexis Barquin, who both founded the Société Sherlock Holmes de France (SSHF) in 1993, a non-profit association devoted to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes.
The project draws on the research and documentation assembled by the online Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia, created and curated by Alexis Barquin. Their aim is to uncover and make available to the widest possible audience a wealth of discoveries that, until now, were often reserved for insiders belonging to Holmesian or Doylean societies, through an open format that creates a new daily rendezvous.
Something never seen before!
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and many others are waiting for you on this online platform, accessible from your home, on your smartphone or computer, from your library or your living room, whenever you feel like returning to the enchanted worlds of Baker Street, ''The Lost World'', the Napoleonic campaigns of ''Brigadier Gerard'', or the chivalric adventures of ''The White Company'', whether your taste is for detective fiction, the fantastic or the epic.