"A Battered Tin Dispatch Box"

When my sister and her family returned from their yearly visit to Florida, they came bearing two plastic eighteen gallon tubs from my brother Kenny. One had a bizarre collection that included a huge colonial American flag, a quilted smoking cap, and a rubber bendy monk. The other had a load of approximately fifty books, most of them about Sherlock Holmes. Kenny had received them as part of a legacy from a good friend of his who had recently, tragically passed away way too soon, and he sent them to me as a fitting home with a Holmes enthusiast. I'm going to spend the next few posts cataloging them.

The first group consists of books about Sherlock Holmes and his world.

The Encyclopedia Sherlockiana and The Ultimate Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia, by Jack Tracy. Both really the same book, published in slightly different format. I actually already have a third, paperback edition of this.

The Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia, by Orlando Park. Much the same, but less detailed and no illustrations.

Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street, by William S. Baring-Gould. Famous 1962 fictional biography of Holmes, by the same man who produced the annotated Sherlock Holmes. Full of interesting metafictional fancies, such as the claim that Holmes was the father (by Irene Adler) of Nero Wolfe.

Sherlock Holmes by Gas-Lamp: Highlights from the First Four Decades of The Baker Street Journal, edited by Philip A. Shreffler. From the proceedings of the premier Sherlockian organization.

A Sherlock Holmes Companion, Edited by Peter Haining. An eclectic scrapbook of puzzles, ponderings, parodies, and pictures featuring the great detective collected by one of the greatest fanboys to ever live.

The Films of Sherlock Holmes, by Chris Steinbrunner and Norman Michaels. An older book that ends in about the mid-Seventies. As such, it is interesting as a snapshot of a time, and of Holmes from a certain point of view in time.

Sherlock Holmes & much more, by Doris E. Cook. A book on the actor William Gillette, with special emphasis on his career as the first famous personator of Sherlock Holmes.

The next group: novels written in the Holmesian vein.