A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s first novel featuring his legendary detective Sherlock Holmes — which was first published in 1887 — has been removed from the sixth-grade reading curriculum by the county school board of Albemarle, VA, after voting on it last Thursday for reasons that have attracted controversy to the famed mystery in the past, according to an article at the Los Angeles Times’ Nation Now blog.
Doyle’s extremely negative portrayal of Mormonism as a religion dominated by those who would commit acts of murder, kidnapping, and enslavement to protect their ideals has long been criticized by followers of the Mormon religion. But according to several sources, including Doyle’s own daughter and Levi Edgar Young, a descendant of Mormon leader Brigham Young, Doyle had admitted in the years following the publication of A Study in Scarlet that at the time he wrote it his attitude toward the Church of Latter-Day Saints had been swayed by how the Church was being portrayed in the press. The author had even apologized.
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