Dear Holmesians,
I would like to report an anecdote about Sir ACD I read when
surfing through the net. It goes like this,

A reporter asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1894 if he had been
influenced by the work of Edgar Allen Poe.The creator of Sherlock
Holmes replied, "Oh, immensely!. His detective is the best detective
in fiction."

The reporter asked if that assessment included Sherlock Holmes.

"I make no exception…," Conan Doyle declared."Dupin is unrivalled.

Interestingly, though Conan Doyle openly acknowledged his debt
to Poe, Sherlock Holmes dismisses the American author's detective in
one story when he tells Watson: "No doubt you think that you are
complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin… Now in my opinion, Dupin
is a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his
friend's thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an
hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He has some
analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a
phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.

"Holmes is also critical of another popular fictional
detective, Emile Gaboriau's Inspector Lecoq. "Lecoq was a miserable
bungler…," Holmes says. "…he had only one thing to recommend him
and that was his energy. That book made me positively ill. The
question was how to identify an unknown prisoner.I could have done
it in twenty-four hours. Lecoq took six months or so."

Don't readers see a contradiction in Sir ACD's public pronouncement
and his innermost thoughts which he has voiced through Sherlock
Holmes. Was professional jealousy , the reason for such an attitude?
Why was his attitude hostile to both his predecessors in the field?
was he afraid that his creation may be dwarfed by the others?
Members , we are open to discussion!
Sumalsn