Naked is the Best Disguise: The Death and Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes (ISBN 0-14-004030-7) is a book by Samuel Rosenberg

Samuel Rosenberg

Samuel Rosenberg was best known for his 1974 study of Sherlock Holmes titled Naked is the Best Disguise . His other notable book was The Confessions of a Trivialist .He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, as the son of Jacob S...

 speculating on the alleged hidden meanings in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

 and examining the influence of his writings on other works, especially James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

. Published in 1974, this book argues for a surprising relationship between the Sherlock Holmes stories and Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

, Dionysus

Dionysus

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

, Christ

Christ

Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...

, Catullus

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...

, John Bunyan

John Bunyan

John Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 29 August.-Life:In 1628,...

, Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

, Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...

, Napoleon, Racine

Jean Racine

Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

, Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

, Flaubert, George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

, Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

, Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

, General Charles George Gordon

Charles George Gordon

Major-General Charles George Gordon, CB , known as "Chinese" Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British army officer and administrator....

, Melville

Melville

-In Australia:*Melville, Western Australia - the suburb*City of Melville, Western Australia - the local government authority*Melville Island, Northern Territory in Australia-In Canada:*Melville, Saskatchewan*Melville, Ontario*Melville Peninsula, Nunavut...

, Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

, T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, and many others.

The title comes from lines in William Congreve's The Double Dealer (1694).

No mask like open truth to cover lies,

As to go naked is the best disguise.

This alludes to Samuel Rosenberg

Samuel Rosenberg

Samuel Rosenberg was best known for his 1974 study of Sherlock Holmes titled Naked is the Best Disguise . His other notable book was The Confessions of a Trivialist .He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, as the son of Jacob S...

's premise that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle openly left clues throughout his works revealing his innermost hidden thoughts.

Rosenberg's book was received with disdain by Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

enthusiasts and scholars in the 1970s. It is recognized as the first book of literary criticism about Doyle to appear in print, although many other more respected works have followed.