The Man with the Twisted Lip
“I reached this one,” said my friend, “by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag."
With a title straight out of a Western, “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) was published in the Strand in 1892. It spins an unusual tale of opium abuse, journalists with acting chops, wives with no first names, and the kind of sleepover only Sherlock Holmes could hold.
What does the opium den represent in the Victorian imagination, and is it as racist as it sounds? How does this story explore the malleability of British social class and identity? Should The New Yorker unionize? And why on earth does everyone think Watson's middle name is HAMISH? All these answers and more in today's episode.
Find a transcript - Further reading for this episode
Listen to our narration:
This episode is narrated by Christopher Wilson. Christopher is a stage and voiceover actor currently based in Chicago, IL. He has provided his voice to numerous game, commercial, eLearning, and podcasting projects, including Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery, Superstition and The Unexplored Places. He also co-hosts Backstage Gaming, a podcast looking at video-game storytelling.
Twitter: @CJWilsonVO
Website: www.cjwvoice.com
Music credit: The songs “Denmark (Live)” by the Portland Cello Project and Étude Op us 25 no. 10 in B minor ‘Octave’ by Frédéric Chopin are featured with an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Further reading:
“Dr. Watson’s Christian Name: A Brief Contribution to the Exegetical Literature of Sherlock Holmes,” Dorothy L. Sayers
Confessions of an Opium-Eater, Thomas De Quincey
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London, Judith Flanders
Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817-2020, Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb
Other cases mentioned in this story: SIGN