LONDON — A riveting exhibition here at the Museum of London has capitalized on the full-blown Sherlockmania that seems to have seized the Western world, judging by a new spate of movies, television shows and books.

Unexpectedly, the show, “Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die,” which has drawn record numbers to the museum and continues until April 12, does not focus on the stories about Holmes or his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, though an opening section shows some early notebooks and illustrations as well as a rare portrait of the author in his 30s.

“We deliberately didn’t want to make it a text- and manuscript-heavy library exhibition,” said Alex Werner, the lead curator. “It’s about the character, and although I had a bit of trepidation about putting on an exhibition about a fictional being, we tried to set him firmly against the real city of London in which the stories take place.”