Notes and News (ACD Journal vol. 8)
Notes and News [Vol. 8] is an article published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 8, 1998).
This article is a news column gathering Conan Doyle-related updates on auctions, websites, discussion groups, collectors, publications, performances, and recent Sherlockian publishing.
Article
There seems little doubt that, with the advent of Internet auction groups, collectors are changing their habits to some extent. They are also being offered material that, only a short few years ago, they would not even have considered might be available. One of the most popular auction facilities now available is ebay, where thousands of items change hands each week. A visit to http://www.ebay.com will possibly prove an eye-opener. Here is a sampling of items that have been offered in the not too distant past:
Item #25580748: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Original Manuscript
'Autograph manuscript, signed, entitled 'A Forgotten Tale', 3 separate pages, Nov 27, 1893, 5 x 8, written on verso of pictorial letterhead of the Central Station Hotel, Glasgow. Starting bid: $5,000.'
Item #26938991: The White Company, with A. Conan Doyle letter
'A 1914 edition of The White Company (London: Smith, Elder & Co.). The title page shows 'Twenty-third edition'. Pasted down (or otherwise affixed) to the inside front cover is an autograph letter signed (to a Mr Newman): 'You are most kind. I have every hope that I may come on the 16th as you suggest. I will give you a definite assurance ...' The note is dated Jan 17 (no year). The book bears the name of L.T. Newman (or something similar on the inside front cover. Starting bid: $58.00. (This item sold for $407.00.)'
Item #25972573: Photo of A. Conan Doyle
'Photograph by the great Paul Thompson on April 21, 1992 [sic!] when Doyle was lecturing at New York's Ambassador Hotel on spiritualism. Shows him in his best Sherlock Holmes pose. Back has original paper caption stamped 'Copyright By Paul Thompson New York' and is stamped from the Reference Department of the NEA/ACME Archive of Cleveland. This massive photo library was owned by the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Chain. This photo was obtained before Bill Gates bought the collection for over $800,000. Contrast and quality of the image is magnificent! Starting bid: $99.99,'
Item #27557700: Arthur Conan Doyle, autograph letter signed
'Doyle, Arthur Conan. Memories and Adventures. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1923. First American edition. Laid into the book: Autograph letter, signed, 'Dear Sir/ With pleasure. I am (invested?) in a Psychic Bookshop/which I started for the sale only of this, the most/important literature in the world./We have every/ possible book, old and new, many of them not/published in America. Might we not occasionally/send you some at the lowest prices. I will tell my manager to send a catalogue./Yours sincerely/A. Conan Doyle/July 18.' Along with: (1) an als from the shop manager R. G. Monies(?)-Williams to James Vance of the Leary Stuart and Co. Booksellers, Philadelphia, 1926, concerning a request for certain titles. (2) An envelope from the Psychic Bookshop, in Mr Williams' hand, postmarked July 20, 1925. (3) The catalogue, 20 pages, dated March 1925, of Books in Stock at the Psychic Bookshop & Library. (4) 2 original photographs of the Psychic Bookshop, one interior, one exterior, printed by the Wykeham Studios, London. Starting bid: $75.00.' (Bidding on this item reached $610, but did not meet the seller's reserve (which I discovered to be $1500). I understand that the material relating to the Psychic Bookshop was later split from this lot and sold separately.)
Item #22023764: Conan Doyle's Religion — 1918
'This is a 63 page Booklet 5 x 7 dated Sept. 1918 (on the front cover it states 'Put a one cent stamp here & hand this copy to your letter carrier, it will be placed in the hands of a soldier or sailor at the front.' Titled 'Black & White' and on the cover it says 'Hindenburg it seems will get to hell before he gets to Paris'. The book has 8 different articles in it including an 8 page article titled 'Conan Doyle's Religion'. It explains in detail that Doyle was a crass materialist (there is no life after death, he insisted) during Sherlock's Marvelous Days. Then it tells the story of his conversion to spiritualism as he calls it. A near WWI Publication, interior is in excellent condition and front & rear cover are in good condition & binding is good. Starting bid $20.' (This in fact turned out to be a completely unknown Conan Doyle item, Black and White being published every six weeks from Detroit, Michigan, and edited by H.M. Nimmo. This issue was Vol. II, No. 2, with the article in question appearing on pages 34-41. Bidding on this item reached. $158.50. The article in question is reprinted elsewhere in this Journal by kind permission of Richard Lancelyn Green.)
However, all that glitters...
On 26 August 1998, the following was posted for auction:
Item #27416950: Arthur Conan Doyle, Signed Document
'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, signed document, 1920. A mailing receipt for shipment to Los Angeles of a book (no doubt on spiritualism). Overall in very good condition. Authenticity is 100% guaranteed.' Starting bid: $75.00. (A closer examination of the photographic scan which accompanied the listing revealed that this was in fact a mailing receipt signed by Major Wood on behalf of Arthur Conan Doyle. Wood's initials were appended in brackets following the signature (in the matter in which Wood often signed letters on behalf of ACD. I reported this to the vendor who immediately withdrew the item from auction. Bidding had, by that time, reached $104.50.)
The ACD Society's Web Page was featured in a full-page colour article on Computing in the Reno Gazette-Journal for 12 January 1998. The Web Page is undoubtedly proving popular and is becoming a regular reference source for many scholars. Between May and September 1998, the site recorded 2755 hits and received 2345 unique visitors. That's an average of 15 visitors each day using the Society's resources for information and reference. If you have internet access, check out the web pages by visiting: http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/acdsocy.html
As an addition to its web presence, the Society is also hosting an Internet Discussion Group [email protected] Members are invited to apply to become a subscriber. Full details are available on the Society's web page. Part of the Group's activities revolves around discussion of ACD's writings, and to assist those discussions e-texts are being made available for the stories concerned. To date, the following e-texts are available:
- 'Lot No. 249'
- 'The Leather Funnel'
- 'The Man Who Was Wanted' by Arthur Whitaker
- 'The Recollections of Captain Wilkie'
- 'The Lord of Chateau Noir'
- 'How the Brigadier came to the Castle of Gloom'
- 'The Blighting of Sharkey'
- 'The Bully of Brocas Court'
- Waterloo (the play)
- 'A Straggler of '15'
- 'That Veteran'
- 'How the Brigadier Played for a Kingdom'
- 'The Case of Lady Sannox'
The Caxton Club of Chicago also has an interesting page about Dr Fred Kittle, who, as reported in the last issue of ACD, plans to gift his Doylean collection to the Club's Library. The article was originally published in the March 1997 issue of The Caxtonian, and can be located at: http://www.caxtonclub.org/reading/doyle.html
Web sites not specifically related to ACD or Sherlock Holmes also often carry information of relevance to Doyleans. For instance, The History Net currently carries an article by Bruce Heydt reprinted from British Heritage: 'Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Case of George Edalji'. This can be accessed at http://www.historynet.com/BritishHeritage/articles/1998/07982_cover.htm
Conan Doyle's Spiritualist interests are briefly examined at another web location: http://www.nucleus.com/~gateway/doyle.html, and there is an account of Conan Doyle's first showing of the animated dinosaurs from the film of The Lost World, staged in the presence of Houdini, at: http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/doyle.htm
The main internet source of all that is relevant in the Doylean and Sherlockian worlds remains Chris Redmond's Sherlockian Holmepage. If you're looking for something and want to save time viewing endless pages provided by the various search engines, check here first: http://watserv1.uwaterloo.ca/~credmond/sh.html
In a glimpse from the past-1923 to be exact-The Vancouver Sun printed the following in its '75 Years Ago Today' column on 16 June 1998:
'A letter to the editor signed by a 'Christian Churchgoer' read, in part: 'Vancouver is indebted to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his address Wednesday night in the arena. If he did not convince everybody, he at least gave a clear and lucid explanation of spiritualistic beliefs, something we have not had before.
Always of interest to Doylean collectors, the catalogues of book-dealer Sumner & Stillman of Yarmouth, Maine are well worth acquiring on a regular basis. Catalogue Eighty-Five (generously illustrated), issued in May 1998, titled 'Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle', contained some sixty first class Conan Doyle items, including the American edition of The Case For Spirit Photography (at a mere $225). For more information on their holdings, and to receive catalogues regularly, contact Sumner & Stillman, P.O. Box 973, Yarmouth, U.S.A. ME 04096.
The revival of Conan Doyle's Waterloo at this year's Shaw Festival prompts mention of The Irving Society, set up to foster an interest in the renowned actor-manager. The annual subscription is £15, and preliminary information received indicates that the society's proposals include: a birthday lecture at the Theatre Museum; a dinner with guest-speaker at a first-class venue with an Irving association; and the publication, in June and December, of First Knight, the Society's newsletter. For further details contact the Honorary Secretary, Brien Chitty, at 69 Harcourt Street, Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire NG24 1RG, or e-mail him at [email protected] .co.uk. Inevitably, there is also a web site: http://www.cadev.demon.co.uk/Irving.
Interest in the late Jeremy Brett's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes seems to be somewhat on the wane: it is now three years since Brett's premature demise and somewhat longer since the last of the Granada series was produced. The first attempt at a whole-life biography appeared in September 1997: The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes, subtitled 'The Tortured Mind of Jeremy Brett'. Written by hack-journalist Terry Manners, this study was full of innuendo, little original thinking, and a smattering of plagiarism. As Jeremy Brett was an Honorary Member of this Society, we considered whether we should fully review Manners's book, but decided that there was so little of merit in it, that we could really do no better than wish that it had not been written, and that the spirit of one who made so significant a contribution to the world of Sherlock Holmes might better have been left to rest in peace. Quite how a new offering, Linda Pritchard's Jeremy Brett — Linda Pritchard Story: On the Wings of Paradise (Rupert Books, 1998) will be viewed, remains to be seen. At the time of writing, the book has been published, but we have not received our copy, and an opinion on this title must therefore be deferred. Other minor offerings relating to Jeremy Brett are covered in the review section of this Journal.
Barbara Roden's regular column for Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine concentrates on lesser-known non-Sherlockian aspects of Conan Doyle's writing. View her alternative view of the Cottingley Fairies episode at the Society's web site: http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/ACDFAIRIES.html.
The magazine which sparked the Golden Age of the Detective Story is back-The Strand Magazine is being revived. Editor Andrew Gulli tells us: 'Every issue features at least ten gripping mysteries by award-winning authors; the Sherlockian section is unsurpassed; our pastiches, articles, and columns by well-know writers are sure to attract fans of the great detective and his versatile creator. In addition there are insightful reviews.'
Sounds good! The first issue of the new magazine is due to hit news-stands in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain at the end of October and will feature fiction, including a Sherlockian pastiche. from Chris Redmond; an analysis of Holmes and Wimsey from Chris Willis; Barbara Roden's new regular column on 'The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' (Part One deals with Jacques Futrelle's 'Thinking Machine'); and Christopher Roden's column dealing with various aspects of the work of ACD — in the first issue, Captain Sharkey sets sail once again.
The cover price is $4.95 and the magazine is to be published quarterly. For subscriptions (US and Canada $24.95; International $29.95), contact The Strand Magazine, P.O. Box 1418, Birmingham, MI 48012-1418, U.S.A.
One feature of the latest title in Calabash Press's series The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes (The Dying Detective) is an analysis by Owen Dudley Edwards of ACD's condemnation of Fergus Hume's The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886). Edwards also considers Conan Doyle's rare article, 'Life and Death in the Blood', the text of which is reproduced in this volume. As usual with The Case Files series, the contributors attempt to provide as thorough an overview and analysis of the story as possible, with many interesting results. This time around there are articles from: Chris Redmond, Barbara Roden, Brad Keefauver, Richard Lancelyn Green, S. E. Dahlinger, Owen Dudley Edwards, David Stuart Davies, John Hall, Sonia Fetherston, Diana Barsham, R. Dixon Smith, Kathryn White, and Christopher Roden. The Dying Detective is available in cloth and paperback editions. For further information, contact Calabash Press at P.O. Box 1360, Ashcroft, British Columbia, Canada VOK 1A0 (Tel: (250) 453-2045; Fax: (250) 453-2075; e-mail: [email protected]. Or check out their web site at http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/calabash.html.
The second volume in the series, The Speckled Band is still available, and the fourth volume, The Blue Carbuncle, will be published in January. The first offering, The Musgrave Ritual, is now out of print.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
