Sherlock fandom

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Sherlock fandom is an international, informal community of fans of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, especially of the Canon of Sherlock Holmes. The fans are known as Sherlockian or Holmesian. [1] Fans of the literary detective Sherlock Holmes are widely considered to have comprised the first modern fandom, [2] holding public demonstrations of mourning after Holmes was "killed off" in 1893, and creating some of the first fan fiction as early as about 1897 to 1902. [2] [3] [4]

Arthur Conan Doyle British detective fiction author

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a British writer best known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. Originally a physician, in 1887 he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels about Holmes and Dr. Watson. In addition, Doyle wrote over fifty short stories featuring the famous detective. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Canon of Sherlock Holmes 56 short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the 56 short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this context, the term "canon" is an attempt to distinguish between Doyle's original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters.

Sherlock Holmes fictional private detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional private detective created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a "consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, forensic science, and logical reasoning that borders on the fantastic, which he employs when investigating cases for a wide variety of clients, including Scotland Yard.

Contents

Noted Sherlockian John Bennett Shaw [5] compiled a list of 100 books, pamphlets, and periodicals essential for Sherlockian study entitled The Basic Holmesian Library. [6] The list, along with Shaw's extensive Sherlock Holmes Library, resides at the University of Minnesota Libraries where it was donated a year after his death. [7]

University of Minnesota Libraries library system of the University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota Libraries is the library system of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, operating at 13 facilities in and around Minneapolis–Saint Paul. It has over 7 million volumes and 109,000 serial titles that are collected, maintained and made accessible. The system is the 17th largest academic library in North America and the 22nd largest library in the United States. While the system's primary mission is to serve faculty, staff and students, because the University is a public institution of higher education its libraries are also open to the public.

Sherlockian game

Fans often play "The Great Game", [8] contending that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were real people and Conan Doyle was merely Watson's literary agent. [9]

Dr. Watson fictional character of Sherlock Holmes

John H. Watson, known as Dr Watson, is a fictional character in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson is Sherlock Holmes' friend, assistant and sometime flatmate, and the first person narrator of all but four of these stories. He is described as the typical Victorian-era gentleman, unlike the more eccentric Holmes. He is astute, although he can never match his friend's deductive skills.

Many authors have authored "biographies" of Sherlock Holmes such as William S. Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street , [8] Nick Rennison's Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography . [10] Both Baring-Gould and Leslie S. Klinger have edited annotated editions of the Canon of Sherlock Holmes. [8]

William Stuart Baring-Gould was a noted Sherlock Holmes scholar, best known as the author of the influential 1962 fictional biography, Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective.

Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street: A Life of the World's First Consulting Detective is a 1962 novel by William S. Baring-Gould. The book purports to be a biography of Sherlock Holmes. It is considered to be the "definitive" biography of Sherlock Holmes.

<i>Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography</i>

Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Nick Rennison, originally published in 2005.

Societies

in 1934, Christopher Morley hosted a dinner in New York City in honor of Sherlock Holmes which led to the formation of The Baker Street Irregulars. [11] Later that same year in London, England the Sherlock Holmes Society was formed. [11] Since that time, organizations have formed all over the world devoted to Sherlock Holmes [4] with Japan being home to the largest society. [12]

Christopher Morley American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Christopher Morley was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures.

New York City Largest city in the United States

The City of New York, often called New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in both the state of New York and the United States. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.

The Baker Street Irregulars is an organization of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts founded in 1934 by Christopher Morley. The nonprofit organization currently numbers some 300 individuals worldwide. The group has published The Baker Street Journal — an "irregular quarterly of Sherlockiana" — since 1946.

List of societies

United States federal republic in North America

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

The Bootmakers of Toronto are a literary society devoted to Sherlock Holmes and located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Toronto City in Ontario, Canada

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Cookbooks

Various cookbooks with a Victorian era Sherlockian theme have been published over the years. 1976 brought both Dining with Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Cookbook by Julia Rosenblatt and Frederic H. Sonnenschmidt [13] as well as Sherlock Holmes Cookbook by Sean M. Wright and John Farrell. [13] [14] The latter two authors are both investitures of the Baker Street Irregulars. [15] [16] William Bonnell authored The Sherlock Holmes Victorian Cookbook [13] in 1997. [17]

Cosplay

Cosplay is often an aspect of Sherlockian fandom [18] [19] with a Sherlock Cosplay World Record attempted at UCL in 2014. [20]

See also

Related Research Articles

Fandom subculture composed of fans sharing a common interest

A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the object(s) of their fandom and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest, often as a part of a social network with particular practices ; this is what differentiates "fannish" (fandom-affiliated) fans from those with only a casual interest.

<i>The Return of Sherlock Holmes</i> collection of short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903-1904, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories were published in the Strand Magazine in Great Britain, and Collier's in the United States.

<i>Baker Street</i> (musical) musical

Baker Street is a musical with a book by Jerome Coopersmith and music and lyrics by Marian Grudeff and Raymond Jessel.

<i>In Re: Sherlock Holmes</i> book by August Derleth

"In Re: Sherlock Holmes"—The Adventures of Solar Pons is a collection of detective fiction short stories by American writer August Derleth. It was released in 1945 by Mycroft & Moran in an edition of 3,604 copies. It was the first book issued under the Mycroft & Moran imprint. The book is the first collection of Derleth's Solar Pons stories. The stories are pastiches of the Sherlock Holmes tales of Arthur Conan Doyle.

<i>Sherlock Holmes</i> (1954 TV series) 1954 TV series

Sherlock Holmes was a detective television series aired in syndication in the fall of 1954, based on the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The 39 half-hour mostly original stories were produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed in France by Guild Films, starring Ronald Howard as Holmes and H. Marion Crawford as Watson. Archie Duncan appeared in many episodes as Inspector Lestrade. Richard Larke, billed as Kenneth Richards, played Sgt. Wilkins in about fifteen episodes. The series' associate producer, Nicole Milinaire, was one of the first women to attain a senior production role in a television series.

The Sherlockian game is the pastime of attempting to resolve anomalies and clarify implied details about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson from the 56 short stories and four novels that make up the Sherlock Holmes Canon by Arthur Conan Doyle. It treats Holmes and Watson as real people and uses aspects of the canonical stories combined with the history of the era of the tales' settings to construct fanciful biographies of the pair.

A Study in Scarlet is a 1914 British silent drama film directed by George Pearson and starring James Bragington making him the first English actor to portray Holmes on film. It is based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel of the same name and is considered to be lost. An American film of the same name was released in the U.S. on the following day, 29 December 1914. As of 2014, the film is missing from the BFI National Archive, and is listed as one of the British Film Institute's "75 Most Wanted" lost films.

Leslie S. Klinger is an American attorney and writer. He is a noted literary editor and annotator of classic genre fiction, including the Sherlock Holmes stories and the novels Dracula and Frankenstein as well as Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comics, Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen graphic novel, and the stories of H. P. Lovecraft.

The Valley of Fear is a British silent adventure film of 1916 directed by Alexander Butler and starring Harry Arthur Saintsbury, Daisy Burrell and Booth Conway. The film is an adaptation of The Valley of Fear, a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle published in 1915 and featuring Sherlock Holmes. This is now considered a lost film.

"The Ultimate Crime" is a short story by Isaac Asimov, dealing with a minor aspect of one of the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the 24th of Asimov's Black Widowers mystery stories, and it appeared in his anthology More Tales of the Black Widowers, which collects the second dozen stories of the series. It was written specially for that book. It subsequently appeared again in Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space, an anthology of stories written by different authors and co-edited by Asimov, and Another Round at the Spaceport Bar.

Fanlore is a wiki created to preserve the history of transformative works, as well as that of fans, and fandoms, with a focus on people and their activities rather than on fandom canon. The beta version of Fanlore launched in September 2008, and the wiki came out of beta in December 2010. As of June 2018, more than 45,000 pages have been created on Fanlore, with more than 780,000 edits made by more than 35,000 registered users.

The Baker Street Journal is a quarterly journal devoted to Sherlockiana published by The Baker Street Irregulars. Leslie S. Klinger has called it "the leading publication" in the study of Sherlock Holmes.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is an old-time radio show which aired in the USA on NBC from 1930 to 1936. The series adapted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

Edith Meiser was an American author and actress, who wrote mystery novels, stage plays, and numerous radio dramas. She is perhaps best known for bringing adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories to radio in the 1930s.

From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon is a non-fiction book by Mattias Boström which explores the history of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock fandom, originally published in 2017. It was nominated for an Edgar Award in the category of "Best Critical/Biographical" by the Mystery Writers of America. It won an Agatha Award for "Best Nonfiction" in 2018.

Baker Street Babes is an-all female Sherlockian group who host the web's first all-female Sherlock Holmes podcast. There are eleven members of the group including Edgar Award nominated author Lyndsay Faye, a collective devoid of a president or a leader. They consider themselves "a bridge between older Sherlockians and young, tech-savvy enthusiasts" and they have been described as being "at the center of online Sherlock fandom."

<i>Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula</i>

Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula or The Adventures of the Sanguinary Count) is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche novel by Loren D. Estleman, originally published in 1978.

References

  1. ↑ McClure, Rosemary (October 30, 2018). "A not-so-elementary guide to Sherlock Holmes' London". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  2. 1 2 Brown, Scott (2009-04-20). "Scott Brown on Sherlock Holmes, Obsessed Nerds, and Fan Fiction". Wired . Condé Nast . Retrieved 2015-03-12. Sherlockians called them parodies and pastiches (they still do), and the initial ones appeared within 10 years of the first Holmes 1887 novella, A Study in Scarlet .
  3. ↑ The fanlore.org editors (2015-02-06). "Sherlock Holmes". Fanlore wiki. Fanlore. Archived from the original on 2015-02-06. Retrieved 2015-03-12. The earliest recorded examples of this fannish activity are from 1902...
  4. 1 2 Britt, Ryan (August 29, 2016). "The First Modern Fandom Brought Sherlock Holmes Back from the Dead". Inverse . Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  5. ↑ Boström, Mattias (2018). From Holmes to Sherlock . Mysterious Press. p. 386. ISBN   978-0-8021-2789-1.
  6. ↑ Boström, Mattias (2018). From Holmes to Sherlock . Mysterious Press. p. 435. ISBN   978-0-8021-2789-1.
  7. ↑ Johnson, Timothy J. "The Basic Holmesian Library". University of Minnesota Libraries . Retrieved January 12, 2019.
  8. 1 2 3 Bahn, Christopher (June 7, 2010). Sherlock Holmes. The A.V. Club . Retrieved December 26, 2018.
  9. ↑ Plautz, Jason (September 14, 2011). "Did Dr. Watson Really Write Sherlock Holmes?". Mental Floss . Retrieved December 19, 2017.
  10. ↑ Charles Taylor (2006-11-12). "Baker Street Regular". New York Times . Retrieved 2011-02-10.
  11. 1 2 Riley, Dick; McAllister, Pam (1999). The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Sherlock Holmes. Continuum. p. 91-92. ISBN   0-8264-1116-9.
  12. ↑ Boström, Mattias (2018). From Holmes to Sherlock . Mysterious Press. p. 438. ISBN   978-0-8021-2789-1.
  13. 1 2 3 Manente, Kristina (November 14, 2018). "Cooking Sherlock Holmes' favorite foods". Syfy . Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  14. ↑ "Baker Street Meals And Menus: The Three Garridebs (1976)". The Fourth Garrideb: A Scion Society of The Baker Street Irregulars. June 18, 2016. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  15. ↑ "The 1977 BSI Dinner". The Baker Street Irregulars. December 17, 2015. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  16. ↑ "The 1981 BSI Dinner". The Baker Street Irregulars. February 19, 2016. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  17. ↑ Richards, Linda L. "Review: The Sherlock Holmes Victorian Cookbook". January Magazine . Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  18. ↑ McAlpine, Fraser. "'Sherlock' Cosplay: How To Dress Like Sherlock". BBC America . Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  19. ↑ Foulkes, Imogen (September 17, 2012). "Sherlock Holmes and his fight to the death". BBC . Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  20. ↑ "Sherlock Holmes Cosplay World Record Attempt". Red Carpet News. July 20, 2014. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
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