Review:Detective Fiction: The Collector's Guide/Christopher Roden
This review of the book "Detective Fiction: The Collector's Guide", by John Cooper & B. A. Pike was written by Christopher Roden and published in the The Parish Magazine (No. 13, november 1995).
This review sees Detective Fiction: The Collector's Guide as an attractive and useful reference for collectors, with strong bibliographical detail, helpful essays, and valuable appendices. While the Conan Doyle material is welcomed, the reviewer still regards Green and Gibson as the superior authority and treats this guide as secondary for serious Doylean work.
Review
- Detective Fiction: The Collector's Guide (Second Edtion)
- by John Cooper & B. A. Pike
- Scolar Press, 1994; x + 341pp; £39.50
- ISBN: 0-85967-991-8
Reviewed by Christopher Roden
This is a guide for the collector of detective fiction, the bibliophile who needs to know descriptions of first editions, dealers, and librarians, and as such it must certainly fulfil a function. The production is attractive, the typeface clear, and there is an abundance of illustrations, both black and white and colour, illustrating dust-jackets of first editions of the many writers assembled here.
The first edition, the authors tell us, concentrated on Golden Age authors and their successors, but now the net is cast much more widely. Thank goodness for that, because it has allowed the authors to include Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes novels and collections are given the full treatment with bibliographical descriptions carefully re-written from the information provided in Green & Gibson. A little poetic licence is employed in the descriptions of Holmes and Watson.
In addition to the detailed author-by-author section, there are useful notes on 'Approaches to Collecting', 'Forming a Collection', and 'Maintaining a Collection'. There are useful appendices, too: 'Specialist Dealers', 'Glossary of Terms used by collectors and dealers', 'A Selective Guide to publishers' practice in designating first editions', and a list of Societies and Specialist Journals.
This is a reference book, a book for dipping into, a book useful for providing background information on various authors. Where Conan Doyle is concerned, however, I'll continue to rely on and trust Green & Gibson — anything else is second best.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
