[1] In 1881, by which time he was exchange editor of the Free Press, Barr decided to "vamoose the ranch" and relocated to London to continue his fiction writing career while establishing a weekly English edition of the newspaper.

[8] His 1906 novel The triumphs of Eugène Valmont parodies Holmes and other "gentleman detectives" whose pompous sleuth is a possible antecedent of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot.

In 1903, despite initial reservations about taking on the project, he completed The O'Ruddy, a novel left unfinished by his recently deceased friend Stephen Crane.

[1][6][9] Despite his Holmes satires, he remained on very good terms with Conan Doyle, who described him in the 1920s in his memoir Memories and Adventures as "a volcanic Anglo—or rather Scot-American, with a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest natures underneath it all".

[10] Barr himself wrote several humorous articles about being a writer, including in 1899 “Literature in Canada” , where he described it as a country whose “average citizen ... loves whiskey better than books".

[12] The 1911 census places Robert Barr, "a writer of fiction", at Hillhead, Woldingham, Surrey, a village southeast of London, living with his wife, Eva, their son William, and two female servants.