The BSI weekend 2020, as told in a series of books.

Wikipedia’s photo of the venerable Strand Bookstore at 12th and Broadway.. Long may it wave. Photo from Wikipedia.

Many years ago, I learned there were two essential items for the Baker Street Irregulars weekend in New York City: A credit card and a good sized, empty tote bag. Oh you will need a heavy coat and some fancy duds, plus the energy of a toddler to keep up with the various functions.

Hunting and buying books you can only find (or find first) in New York makes the trip a thrill for the collector.

Books are where I first met Mr. Holmes, and books are where we celebrate our shared affection for The Master Detective. Here’s a look at the book haul from 2020.

I’ve fallen into a pattern over the years, and on the Friday morning of the weekend, will head from Midtown to the Strand Bookstore. These days I toddle up the three flights to the used and rare room. For many years accessible only by the elevator, you can now use the stairs to enter this playground for book lovers. The best part of this space is that you never know what you’ll find: rare and expensive signed firsts in dust jacket, tattered and chipped but loved volumes from someone’s former collection, and everything in between.

I picked up a few little things here, but they will be part of different post later this year.

The Mysterious Bookshop

From the Strand I shift to The Mysterious Bookshop, where for more than 40 years Otto Penzler has been feeding the addictions of mystery book lovers everywhere. First at his shop in Midtown, and now in the increasingly busy Tribeca shopping district, The Mysterious Bookshop is THE place for Sherlockians to meet, browse and buy.

The entire back wall of the shop is made up of Holmes books, mostly new, but some older volumes too. From ceiling to floor and in the glass case that’s nearby, Otto has packed the place with enough reading material to keep the most rapacious Holmes fan sated.

The real joy comes by pushing through the ominous door on the right of the book-lined wall, the one with the “Crime Scene Do Not Cross” yellow tape and the battered but beloved sign that warns: “Nobody shoplifts from a store that knows 2,214 ways to murder someone.” Down the stair and round the corner are the metal shelves that hold a variety of used and rare books, and Otto annually lays in a generous supply of Sherlockiana each January.

I usually find something fun here, and this year was no exception. First up was a unnumbered copy of The Second Cab, the 1947 anthology of trifling monographs by the Speckled Band of Boston.

Although Starrett never attended one of the Band’s meetings, he was especially close to both James Keddie Sr. and Jr. and they had a rich correspondence over the years. Starrett’s voice is loud and clear in the foreword to the volume, which roams from the number of hansom cabs in London to the number of Moriarty brothers named James.

He calls the volume, “a sparkling commentary of the Holmes-Watson codex, and a volume of no mean literary merit.” And so it is.

Cover of Enola Stewart’s talk from the 1985 John Bennett Shaw conference. She’s signed this copy to Jerry (Margolin), “with best wishes.”

Down the shelf was a surprise: A copy of a lecture given by the former bookseller Enola Stewart, whose catalogues from Gravsend Books in Pocono Pines, Pa., were always a delight. Enola spoke at John Bennett Shaw’s 1985 conference held at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.

I was enchanted by the talk and wrote to Enola after the conference requesting a copy, which she dutifully supplied. Somewhere along the way, I lost it, so it was a joy to find another copy, this one formerly from the collection of friend and passionate Holmes art collector Jerry Margolin.

Reading it a few minutes ago brought back some warm memories of the conference and Enola, who was a shy but very patient dealer to me.

I’ll try to hold on to this copy.

Some Notes on a Meeting at Chisham is an oddity. It is a fantasy by Robert J. Bayer on a meeting between Holmes and Father Brown, and was first published in 1948 in Chicago. A collector of G.K. Chesterton as well as Holmes, Bayer worked for specialty publications most of his life.

A member of the Hounds of the Baskerville (sic), Bayer offered this paper at a 1947 meeting of the Hounds, “where it called forth prodigious applause” according to Starrett’s introduction. Its publication the next year makes me wish this had been the first in a series of monographs from that august Windy City group. Alas, it appears to live by itself.

I already owned the first printing of this publication, which is shown here in tan. For some reason, I didn’t buy the Magico reprint (with its mint green cover) when it came out a few decades ago. But as I grow ever more interested in filling every gap, I plucked it from Otto’s shelves and slipped it into my purchase pile.

Is it possible to create a single document that encapsulates a whole Sherlockian year?

Ross Davies certainly seems to be trying in his Baker Street Almanac 2019: An Annual Capsule of a Timeless Past & Future. While neither used nor Starrettian, I was pleased to see a copy at Otto’s and scooped it up.

I’ve yet to delve deeply in this volume, but look forward to pleasant evenings spent by the fire reading about all the things I missed and reminiscing about those events I enjoyed.

Two booklets worth mentioning

I want to make a quick mention here of a few intriguing items from the packets that are distributed at the BSI dinner.

Jayantika Ganguly was sadly absent from the New York festivities this year, but her beautifully produced booklet made me want to book a flight to India. Part fantasy dialogue in London, part travelogue of Canonical sites in India and part chronicle of the doings of the Pondicherry Lodge, it’s a lovingly produced and written brochure that should not be missed. Jaya’s enthusiasm for her native country is matched only by her love for Sherlock Holmes.

There is one other publication in the packet worth mentioning.

Each year, the Norwegian Explorers offers its Christmas Annual, brimming with trifling monographs and this year’s features more than 20 essays devoted to Mystery, Imagination and Horror in the Canon.

Editor’s Ray Riethmeier and Philip Bergem urge the reader to “delve deep into the mysterious, let your imaginations run wild and succumb to the horrors within the world of Sherlock Holmes.” This is a great gift to be given freely.

The Huckster’s Room and a Special Issue

The handsomely produced Conan Doyle Review.

Saturday brings the huckster’s room at the Roosevelt Hotel, with its tables groaning under the weight of bookish goodies. The scent of moldering books mingles with that smell of freshly uncrated books that always sends me back to elementary school when the Scholastic books would come in.

Joy.

I raced to the far end of the room to see Prof. Ashley Polasek and pick up this preview of a promising new journal, The Conan Doyle Review. The reason for my hurry is that this preview issue was limited to 50 copies, and as quick as I was, my was already No. 9. Needless to say, they’re all gone, but you can keep track of the journal’s developments online.

Handsomely produced, this “Special Issue 1” offers a glimpse of what is to come, with an interview with playwright Ken Ludwig and an essay by Ashley that considers Ludwig’s adaptations and why these plays should be taken more seriously than their comic nature might signal.

All in all, it is an inviting glimpse into the first “interdisciplinary journal for scholarship on the life, works, creative afterlives, and the cultural legacies of Arthur Conan Doyle.”

I look forward to future issues.

The Baker Street Irregulars Press table

I missed out on one new book, but was pleased to pick up two new entries in two Baker Street Irregulars Press series.

Education Never Ends: Educators, Education and the Sherlockian Canon, edited by Marino C. Alvarez and Timothy S. Greer is the latest in the BSI Professions Series. The essays look at everything from Canonical tales with educational aspects, to teaching the Holmes stories in the classroom and library. For those of us who first came across Holmes as schoolchildren, it’s a chance to revisit that experience (and more) in the good hands of teachers whose love of Holmes equals their commitment to education.

The newest in the BSI manuscript series is The Worst Man In London, thoughtfully edited by the very capable duo of Daniel Stashower and Dr. Constantine Rossakis. I LOVE this series, because it literally makes you stop and pay word-for-word attention to the very talented pen of Arthur Conan Doyle. Having dipped my toe into these waters a few years back, I have tremendous respect for those who write, edit and design these volumes. They are wonderful.

Here’s just one example of the care and attention given to these books. As one of the two BSI publishers, Robert Katz, pointed out to me, the embossed cover of the book reproduces ACD’s handwritten decision to change the name of the tale. Take a look at the illustrations above to see what he means. That shows you just how much care and attention is given to these volumes.

Meanwhile over at Gasogene Press/Wessex Press

I bring an empty tote bag with me to New York, and by the time I hit the tables laden with Gasogene Press/Wessex Press books, the bag was already starting to dangerously bulge. Nonetheless, there were a few more items I needed to add.

The folks at Gasogene Press/Wessex Press always put out a fine table full of bookish treats, and this year was no exception.

Having helped start a Sherlock Holmes society which is now defunct, I will look forward to reading Nicholas Utechin’s tale of The Milvertonians of Hampstead. Subtitled Forgotten Writings from The Worst Men in London, it’s the tale of a Holmes society which rose, flamed and died out in less than a decade. The fact that it’s largely unknown today makes the volume a kind of archeological dig come to life, with Nick’s steady hand on the trowel and brush.

Volume 5 of Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle in the Newspapers covers the second half of 1894. I think of these as “dipping books,” and don’t so much read them as pull them down of an evening and flip through them to see what surprises arise. The editing team this time around is Mattias Boström. Mark Alberstat and Leah Guinn and they are to be commended for their patience in taking records from more than 100 years ago and making them legible and readable. Mattias says he wants to continue doing this through ACD’s death in 1930. I suspect I will have to buy a separate bookcase just for this series if I’m still around when it is completed!

Next up is not so much a new book but an old friend in a new suit: The Sherlock Holmes Review anthology, Volume 1, 1986-87. Long before Steve Doyle became a dear friend, I knew a little about him through The Sherlock Holmes Review, an adventuresome quarterly that was the playful younger cousin to publications like The Baker Street Journal and Baker Street Miscellanea. That’s not so say the TSHR wasn’t serious in its devotion to Holmes. Not at all. The publication reflected the sensibilities of Steve’s younger self and he looked at Holmes with the devotion of someone who was also a Star Trek devotee, a sci-fi fan and someone who grew up with the pop culture impact of the 70s and 80s. Since we’re not far apart in age, I gravitated to his work. I own all but the first volume of this series, so it’s a delight to have a start on the full run with Volume 1, Number 1. And it’s as good a reason as any to go back and re-read them all.

With no disrespect to all those I’ve mentioned up to now, I have saved the best for last. The Annotated White Company is a book that I’ve been eagerly anticipating for more than two decades. That’s how long Roy Pilot has been talking about his research into Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic adventure novel.

I have long been a fan of The Annotated Lost World, the 1996 book Roy edited along with the late Al Rodin. It is no exaggeration to say that when they published this book, Steve Doyle and Mark Gagen’s Wessex Press announced itself as a major player in the publishing world, and not just in the orbit of Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle specialty presses.

With The Annotated White Company, that place is affirmed.

Working with the the dedicated Doug Elliott, Roy and the Wessex Press folks have produced a handsome, elegantly annotated edition that has everything you might want to know about Doyle’s largely forgotten adventure novel. Roy and Doug have gone back to the sources that Doyle used to create his medieval tale of war, heroism and the idealism of both the author and the era.

Reproduced here too are the N.C. Wyeth illustrations that graced the edition I got from the public library so many years ago. I could not be more excited about spending many wintry hours with the new book from Roy, Doug, Steve and Mark. Well done, all!

Now, the only question is where I’ll find room on the shelves for all this stuff. #collectorproblems.