The Arthur Conan Doyle Study Group
The Arthur Conan Doyle Study Group (ACDSG) was one of many Branch Offices (sub-group) of a popular Sherlock Holmes society based in Fareham, Hampshire called The Franco-Midland Hardware Company (FMHC), which was founded in 1989.
History
The Arthur Conan Doyle Study Group was founded by Mark Chadderton in 1996 to provide members of the FMHC parent society with the option to go beyond their interest in all things Sherlock Holmes and learn more about Arthur Conan Doyle's other stories as well as his life adventures and experiences. The ACDSG was free to join and had a small number of members worldwide.
The Study Group chose the 1929 John Murray 'The Conan Doyle Stories' book as their base text to study ACD's non-Holmes short stories, as there was, at the time, many cheap versions on the market — including 1990's Blitz edition with a blue dustjacket. As a short hand tool, a five letter code was invented for each story in the book, which mirrored the four letter Sherlockian 'Christ-codes' for each Holmes story. A handy, laminated bookmark containing the Conan Doyle story codes was sent out free of charge to all members who requested one.
Publications
The Cerebral Tentacle
Mark Chadderton designed, edited and sent out free of charge a newsletter/journal/fanzine called The Cerebral Tentacle[1], which ran for 5 issues from December 1996 to December 1997.
The first issue was numbered 1859 — ACD's year of birth and subsequent issues had the following year instead of an issue number, for example 1860 was issue 2... and so on.
The newsletter was issued, roughly every quarter, and was A5 in size, written and then printed on a word processor and then designed via photocopying and using the old style original cut and paste technique common to fanzines worldwide.
Each issue had a yellow card cover, utilising as a cover topic or cutting lesser known items of Doylean history or writing/illustration. The inside was all black and white photocopied pages, although issue No. 1862 had a full colour photo 'photo-cornered' into the inside back cover.
The Cerebral Tentacle was a mix of news, reports, plans, competitions, and articles all designed to encourage further participation and study of Arthur Conan Doyle's life and work.
Below is the basic listing of the five issues, noting any significant article or item aside from the usual content mentioned above.
The ACDSG Cumulative Collection
A number of projects got off the ground, including a loose-leaf cumulative collection of Arthur Conan Doyle's rarer writings entitled 'The ACDSG Cumulative Collection: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Forewords', 'Introductions' and 'Prefaces' to Other People's Works'.
Photocopies of these rare pieces were sent out to members and held within a card cover folder mounted with a black and white photo of ACD in order to aid studies of some of ACD’s hard to collect smaller pieces of writing. Like all the items issued by the Study Group, it was a non-profit making venture.
The ACD Altruistic Book Club
Other initiatives included the 'ACD ABC' - or the Arthur Conan Doyle Altruistic Book Club, set up with the intention of helping people get hard to find books about ACD or by ACD.
There were plans for a 'Conan Doyle Stories Encyclopaedia' to be compiled, containing basic listings of people and places within that collection of stories, which Brian Pugh started and the last project which Mark Chadderton worked on for the Study Group was around February 2000, this being an A4 booklet entitled 'The White Company Translations - An Interactive Rough Guide', providing a quick reference guide for each chapter providing a translation of any words in Latin, Spanish, Italian or German.
There was also a plan to issue a collection of essays on each story within 'The Conan Doyle Stories' book, starting with 'That Little Square Box', and a few articles were received but it remained unpublished.
The White Company Translations
Published in february 2000, this 'rough' guide has been produced by the ACD Study Group to help the student of Arthur Conan Doyle, who has either little or no knowledge and understandings of French, Latin, Spanish and occasional other languages that are used in the novel The White Company.
- ↑ Cerebral Tentacle is a reference to Arthur Conan Doyle's poem To An Undiscerning Critic where he mentioned it.
- Acknowledgments and Image credits : Mark Chadderton.
