Frederic Dorr Steele

• Illustration — Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls, as drawn by Steele for the cover of the Collier's issue containing "The Adventure of the Empty House" (1903) • Illustration — Illustration by Steele of Inspector Hopkins, Dr. Watson, and Sherlock Holmes in "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez" (Collier's, 1904) For Collier's Weekly in 1903, Steele was invited to do the illustrations for The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. He continued to produce drawings for Sherlock Holmes stories for various publishers during the rest of his career. He illustrated 26 of the last 33 Sherlock Holmes stories for their initial American magazine appearances. Steele was the foremost American illustrator of the Holmes stories. His illustrations were largely responsible for popularizing the association of Holmes with a curved pipe and deerstalker hat. Steele's illustrations for the thirteen stories in The Return of Sherlock Holmes were made in Deerfield, Massachusetts. His model for Sherlock Holmes for these stories was an English model named Robert King, who traveled to Deerfield to work with Steele. For later stories, Steele drew Holmes from other models including Frank B. Wilson and S. B. Doughty. He based his depiction of Holmes on the portrayal of the character by the American actor William Gillette, who starred in the play Sherlock Holmes in its 1899 premiere and later productions. Steele wrote an essay titled "Sherlock Holmes: A Little History of the World's Most Famous Fictional Character" for a souvenir program for the play dated November 22, 1929. In a part of the essay concerning illustrations, he acknowledged that he based his depiction of Holmes on Gillette, and addressed a misconception that his drawings influenced Gillette's portrayal: Everybody agreed that Mr. Gillette was the ideal Sherlock Holmes, and it was inevitable that I should copy him. So I made my models look like him, and even in two or three instances used photographs of him in my drawings. But while the actor was seen by thousands, the magazines and books were seen by millions; so after a score of years had gone by, few could remember which "did it first." Even so well informed a historian as Mr. Clayton Hamilton has tried to give me credit which belongs entirely to Mr. Gillette. He also wrote in the essay that he did not see Gillette's play until 1905, and that he drew Gillette from life for the first time in 1929. Steele illustrated a Sherlock Holmes parody by Carolyn Wells titled "The Adventure of the Clothes-line", which was published in The Century Magazine in May 1915. Steele was a fan of Holmes, and wrote four short Sherlock Holmes parodies that have been published in various periodicals and collections: "The Adventure of the Missing Hatrack" (1926), "The Adventure of the Missing Artist" (1928), "The Attempted Murder of Malcolm Duncan" (1932), and "The Adventure of the Murdered Art Editor" (1933). Vincent Starrett dedicated his 1933 book The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes to Steele and two other people including William Gillette. In the book, Starrett praised Steele's illustrations of the Holmes stories, stating that "No happier association of author and artist can be imagined". Starrett also wrote that there was a popular misconception that Gillette was influenced by Steele's drawings rather than the reverse. An article by Steele titled "Sherlock Holmes in Pictures" appeared in The New Yorker on May 22, 1937. A slightly revised version of this article was included in Starrett's 1940 anthology 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes. Steele illustrated the dust jacket of Ellery Queen's 1944 anthology The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, which also included other work by Steele.

In the last years of his life, Steele used medicine for a heart condition. In the spring of 1944, he suffered a breakdown in health and was brought to the Mountainside Hospital in New Jersey, where he was diagnosed with pellagra. He spent two months there, and then stayed for a similar period at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He died at Bellevue Hospital, New York on 6 July 1944. He was cremated and his ashes were interred in a family plot at the Albany Rural Cemetery. Between March 26 and April 7, 1945, a memorial exhibition of his work was held at the Morton Galleries in New York. His children donated a large collection of manuscripts, photographs, artwork, and other materials relating to Steele's life and career to the University of Minnesota Libraries in 1986. There are plans to erect a memorial stone at his resting place in his honor.