SEVERAL EXPERT READERS, including Ellery Queen, have described this oft-reprinted story as the best Sherlock Holmes parody (though I confess to a weakness for several of those by Robert L. Fish). There are, however, greater connections between the two hugely popular authors of the Victorian era than that they have both written about Holmes.
Bret Harte (1836–1902) established a reputation as one of the first and greatest chroniclers of life in the American West, specifically the gold rush years of California, in such stories as “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869), which has been the basis for several films as well as multiple operas, and “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868), which brought him nationwide fame and wealth. His success did not last long, however, and though he continued to be published on a regular basis, his stories found little favor in America, often dismissed as derivative and sentimental. He moved to England in 1885, where his work enjoyed a large and enthusiastic following. Harte lived there for the rest of his life—an oddity, as he was then known as “the quintessential American writer.”
In his autobiography, Arthur Conan Doyle admitted that several of his early short stories, such as “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley” (1879) and “The American’s Tale” (1880), were “feeble echoes of Bret Harte.” Furthermore, the plot of Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (1892) appears to bear a striking resemblance to Harte’s narrative poem, “Her Letter.”
“The Stolen Cigar-Case” was first published in the December 1900 issue of Pearson’s Magazine; it was first published in book form in Condensed Novels: New Burlesques (Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1902).