12. Holmes character changed as the stories went on
From October 1903 through December 1904, thirteen short stories featuring the adventures of Holmes and Watson appeared in The Strand Magazine. In one, The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, Holmes engaged in a barfight in Surrey. He returned to Baker Street, where Watson had remained, and explained his bruises to Watson, though he also noted his opponent had to be carried home, unconscious. When Doyle submitted the story to his editors at The Strand Magazine, they rejected it on the grounds that there was too little of Holmes in the story. Doyle rewrote the story, though the final version displeased him, and he later discounted it as not up to his more recent works.
The story reminds Doyle’s fans that Holmes is a trained pugilist, as well as an expert in martial arts (Holmes used the then little-known Japanese martial art of baritsu to defeat Moriarty in the earlier story). It also generated some controversy over Doyle’s depiction of a defrocked minister. Nonetheless, it remained a popular story through several radio plays through the remainder of the 20th century, most of them relatively faithful to the original. When it originally appeared, a bicycling craze swept both Europe and the United States, and Doyle used the device in the title and story with his eye on cycling’s popularity.