Why there is not as much Holmes in literature?

As a fan of Sherlock Holmes i wondered why there is not as much literature as there is in Jane Austen, for example. The Jane Austen books keep coming - there have to be hundreds of them - but it doesnt seem that Sherlock Holmes who is so popular, and even more popular after the movie, has touched off the same explosion of additional literature.

Are you referring to lit crit, or to those godawful, feeble, ought-to-be-banned attempts by others to continue a dead author's work?

If the former, I expect it's because Austen is extensively taught and studied in the halls of academe, while Doyle is not. There have been, however, a fair number of books about Doyle/Holmes, including a collection of essays by Dorothy L. Sayers (who has herself been a victim of the latter phenomenon).

If you mean the latter, well, I guess my views on those are evident! But there have been quite a number, really. Currently, there's Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series (which, actually, isn't bad). Nicholas Meyer wrote a few, such as The Seven Percent Solution, and there have been others. Holmes has been the frequent subject of parodies; August Derleth's "Solar Pons" stories are a good example.

it seems to me that there has been an absolute glut of Holmes related material lately, and i really don't think it was spawned by that horrid attempt at a movie.

I guess i was thinking more of recent material. I know about the Laurie King series and the Irene Adler series but where you have literally hundreds of books spawned by Austens six novels - maybe hundreds a year - you have very little recent stuff about Holmes. I think the 7% solution was written in the 70s. And i thought the movie was horrid too. Nothing 'Holmes' about it.

in roughly the past decade alone we see books by Eddie Maguire, Stephen Kendrick, Sena Jeter Naslund, Val Andrews, J.M. Gregson (great name), Caleb Carr, novels and a collection of short stories by Donald Thomas, a series by Larry Millet, Jamyang Norbu, and edited collections which include many short stories by various authors (My Sherlock Holmes, Holmes for the Holidays, etc), and these are just authors from my own collection. i haven't been collecting them as actively as i used to, so there are undoubtedly even more recent offerings.

check my collection for some more titles if you're interested.

(edited for atroshus speeling)

Check my collection too, you can find it under the tag 'sherlockiana'.