The strange lives of our forefathers
I was just doing some quick reading on Wilkie Collins, to see if Giles and Watson might be likely to have a conversation about his novels. Watson would be interested, since The Moonstone is usually labeled the first English-language detective story. (The two might discuss Huck Finn, but I think Watson unlikely to have read it.)
What a whacky weird life Collins led, huh? Opium addiction, ongoing long-term relationships with two women, big buddies with Dickens.
[Edit] More with the research! YouTube, home of pirated video, has a crappy selection of G&S. Practically the only decent clip is this song from Patience, featuring the excellent Bunthorne of Dennis Olsen. (NB: Giles and Watson go to see the Mikado in its final month at the Savoy. Which is the bit I'm writing now. Perhaps for (cough) research I will go re-watch Topsy-Turvy)
What a whacky weird life Collins led, huh? Opium addiction, ongoing long-term relationships with two women, big buddies with Dickens.
[Edit] More with the research! YouTube, home of pirated video, has a crappy selection of G&S. Practically the only decent clip is this song from Patience, featuring the excellent Bunthorne of Dennis Olsen. (NB: Giles and Watson go to see the Mikado in its final month at the Savoy. Which is the bit I'm writing now. Perhaps for (cough) research I will go re-watch Topsy-Turvy)
The Moonstone is fun, and a little weird, and definitely worth the read. Or so I thought.
Funny aside: we saw a portrait of William Godwin in the Nat'l Portrait Gallery in London. Husband pointed it out as that of the father of Mary Shelley. I didn't notice that he was also a tedious novelist!
But in the second chapter of in Study in Scarlet Watson asks Holmes if he is like Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin, from Murders in the Rue Morgue. So if you looking for a known author Watson read that Giles might have too that could be it.