Julian Wolff, and the BSI of an earlier era

Just added at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/dispatch-box.html, my Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter article of last month about “Julian Wolff and Still Waters,” with the kind permission of McDiarmid Curator Timothy Johnson and newsletter editor Julie McKuras.  In addition to what it has to say about Julian Wolff personally, I think more recent arrivals to the ranks of the BSI may be surprised to learn how succession occurred in an earlier era, even if Julian bears responsibility for how this has changed, and not to the BSI’s betterment.  The Sherlock Holmes Collections Newsletter is invaluable reading for all interested in the world of Sherlock Holmes, and if you don’t receive it already, contact the editor at Mike9750@aol.com.

Coming soon at the website, something entirely new:  What happened to Sherlock Holmes when John Law came knocking at the door of Christ Cella's speakeasy in 1929!

Mea Culpa

I am not as conscientious about this blog as I should be, for which I apologize.  But since the holidays ended I have resumed the new Links of the Week at my BSI Archival History website, and added a bunch of stuff elsewhere there, including highlights of my own from the BSI weekend in New York, that are best accessed through the website's Editor's Gas-Bag at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html.  


Woody Hazelbaker's World will take a while longer to resume.  Working against a deadline, Dan Stashower and I are annotating the text of A. Conan Doyle's first, never published, attempt at a novel, and writing a critical introduction for it.  The book will be published by the British Library in the autumn.  The Narrative of John Smith (which in his 1924 autobiography Memories and Adventures Conan Doyle described not entirely honestly as having been lost forever in the post in 1883) is not the sort of work one usually thinks of as a Conan Doyle novel.  But it is proving to be a source of considerable discoveries about his reading, thinking, and future literary trajectory at the time when he was a struggling young physician in Southsea, struggling even hard to become a published writer.  Reading the ms., it can be difficult to believe that in just a year -- he was rewriting it from memory in 1884 -- he would create Sherlock Holmes and write A Study in Scarlet.  But many elements of that first Sherlock Holmes tale asee light first in this earlier manuscript of his, not to mention of his subsequent Holmes tales and other literary work of his.

Robert Clyne has died.

Bob Clyne was a co-founder of The Diogenes Club of Brooklyn, when an undergraduate at Fordham University in 1949, and was invested in the BSI in 1959 as "The Opal Tiara." His hometown newspaper obituary is here.  Bob was eighty, and age and poor health had not permitted him to participate in BSI for some time, but his death removes a surviving link to the club as Christopher Morley and Edgar W. Smith knew it, just now as it increasingly becomes something it never was then, a fan club pretending to be an "international literary society."

EQMM reviews BAKER STREET IRREGULAR

Jon Breen, in the February issue:

**** Jon Lellenberg: Baker Street Irregular, Arkham House/Mycroft & Moran, $39.95. The outstanding item in our annual birthday round-up is the latest novel about eminent fans of the Baker Street sleuth. Though it follows fictionalizations as excellent as Anthony Boucher’sThe Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940) and Arthur H. Lewis’s Copper Beeches(1971), this quite different novel may be the best of them all. In an espionage saga extending from 1933 to the early years of the Cold War, New York lawyer Woody Hazelbaker helps settle the affairs of mobster Owney Madden, joins the BSI, and participates in intelligence activities before, during, and after World War II. Clearly based extensively on fact (and a whole second volume is projected to document and clarify), this extraordinary historical novel is recommended to anyone interested in the run-up to World War II in the United States and the role of codebreaking in the defeat of Germany and Japan. Excellent talk in place of physical action gives a much more authentic feel than the cinematic choreography of lesser novels. Historical characters abound from FDR and Churchill to the founding Irregulars, many of whom (notably radio commentator Elmer Davis) had an important role in the war effort. Also appearing is prolific British thriller writer Dennis Wheatley, who would have appreciated how Lellenberg draws several plot strands together for a startling ending.

"I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" interview

Scott Monty and Burt Wolder were kind enough to interview me about my BSI novel Baker Street Irregular for their "I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" podcast series, and have just posted it.  Hear it at 
http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2010/12/episode-29-baker-street-irregular.html

Bob Mangler has died.

http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html

an Irregular Veterans/Armistice Day thought

at http://www.bsiarchivalhistory.org/BSI_Archival_History/Gas-Bag.html