I like digging through the Library of Congress’ photo and print archives. Inspired by the newspaper article on William Gillette’s 1900 Sherlock Holmes tour, I found theater posters from that tour. I did some clean-up of the backgrounds, and I might print these out, put these in frames, and decorate my home or office withContinue reading “Sherlock Holmes Theater Posters of 1900”
Category Archives: Reading
A Triple Parody
An anonymous triple parody, from the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Evening Farmer, January 29, 1910, though it can be found in other newspapers across the country at about the same time. Sheer-Luck Blake The modern Sexton Blake climbed through the kitchen window, followed by his faithful ally, Bunny–or was it Watson? “Ah,” exclaimed Blake, surveying the surroundings.Continue reading “A Triple Parody”
A Perceptive Sherlockian of 1900
While doing some genealogical research in old newspapers — see here — I came across this fascinating piece in the Baltimore Sun of October 26, 1900, copied from the New Orleans Times-Democrat. It’s not just fans of today’s media, like Marvel Comics films and HBO prestige dramas and comic books, speculating about what’s next forContinue reading “A Perceptive Sherlockian of 1900”
A Vintage Peanuts Cookbook
Somehow I’ve become the kind of person who buys vintage cookbooks. In the spring, shortly after the COVID shutdown began, I bought a cookbook from 1912 published in conjunction with Washington, DC’s Heurich Brewery. At the end of July, I bought another cookbook through eBay, this one a Peanuts-themed Chex cereal cookbook published in 1991.Continue reading “A Vintage Peanuts Cookbook”
Speculating about The Great Gatsby
Some recent thinking on Twitter… F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby enters the public domain at the beginning of 2021. Header photo: “Gatsby,” by Larry Yeiser, licensed CC BY-ND 2.0
The Martian Menace
There are Sherlock Holmes novels. And there are novels starring Sherlock Holmes. There’s a difference, a subtle one, but still a difference. A Sherlock Holmes novel has the usual trappings — the client upon the stair, a few cuts at the violin strings, some deduction, a hansom cab out on a dark night on aContinue reading “The Martian Menace”
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes: Making an eBook
Throughout January I worked, off and on, on something of a private project, to make an ebook of Ellery Queen’s long-out-of-print anthology, The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes. An anthology of Sherlock Holmes parodies, sprinkled with a few genuine pastiches and two play scripts, essentially a survey of non-Doyle Sherlock Holmes literature to mid-century, The MisadventuresContinue reading “The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes: Making an eBook”
The Coldest December
On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in Halifax, Nova Scotia’s harbor. One of the ships, the Mont-Blanc, carrying munitions en route to Europe, caught fire and, shortly after 9 o’clock local time, the cargo exploded, laying waste to the city and surrounding communities, killing (officially) two thousand and injuring nearly 10,000 more, in what’sContinue reading “The Coldest December”
The Cathedral of Fear
If the first book in Alessandro Gatti’s Sherlock, Lupin & Me series, The Dark Lady was the secret origin (ie., how they met) of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler, and Arsène Lupin as teenagers, the next two (The Soprano’s Last Song and The Mystery of the Scarlet Rose) are in the main SherlockContinue reading “The Cathedral of Fear”
Anne of Green Gables, in Gaelic
Saturday morning, while browsing Facebook, I found an interested an unexpected article — Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables is being translated into Scots Gaelic. The Canadian dialect of Gaelic was spoken on Prince Edward Island, though in declining numbers, at the time Montgomery’s novels were set, and I did not know that MontgomeryContinue reading “Anne of Green Gables, in Gaelic”