Where did the idea for Amelia come from?
Many years ago an acquaintance of mine told me about her idea for an anthology of stories about traditional fairy tales rewritten from a feminist slant. I wasnt sure I could contribute anything worthy to that, but it did get me thinking. Ultimately I began to wonder about the wife of Dr. Watson: what would she think about her husband and his strange friend suddenly disappearing to go arm themselves and hide in the bushes all night in pursuit of a master criminal? That seeded the idea, and then I vaguely remembered that Watson had been married twice in the original stories, though nothing was known about the second wife. I found the one reference to her existence in The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier and took it from there. Amelia, incidentally, was created out of the whole cloth. Conan Doyle never named or identified the second wifes existence, and after her one cryptic mention, promptly forgot about her.
