Using Digital Tools to Explore Spatial Strategies and the Illusion of Realism in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Oliver Twist

Bushell, Sally and Hutcheon, Rebecca (2026) Using Digital Tools to Explore Spatial Strategies and the Illusion of Realism in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Oliver Twist. Cartographica. ISSN 0317-7173 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper interprets the literary spaces of London as depicted in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) and Oliver Twist (1838) through acts of mapping and reading the city. Digital mapping tools, combined with analysis of spatial meaning in the text, enable us to visualise and understand spatial meaning in literature far more fully than ever before. However, while many digital mapping projects for literature seek to align fictional space with the “real”, this study argues that such correspondence is often secondary to the narrative strategies through which writers construct a totalising sense of place that is nonetheless illusional. In contrast to many digital literary mapping projects that treat historical maps as a benchmark for fictional accuracy, then, we approach mapping as a way of making visible the different techniques through which Dickens and Conan Doyle construct verisimilitude and how these strategies illuminate broader questions about the relationship between maps and texts in literary interpretation. The paper is in four parts. The first section maps the fictional onto real world maps using digital map layers and compares the two. The second turns from visual acts of mapping to verbal and looks closely at Conan Doyle’s textual and spatial strategies as Holmes and Watson move across different parts of London. The third section compares strategies in an early work also centred on criminal London: Oliver Twist. The final section problematises the desire for fiction to be “accurate” in a detailed reading of the short story “The Blue Carbuncle”.