Sherlock Holmes Handbook sums up a Canadian scholar's lifetime expertise about Sherlock Holmes -- the characters and themes, the publishers and readers, Victorian London and the Houdini connection, radio actors and cartoonists, the fans who cling to Holmes's reality and the professors who tease out motifs from the fifty-six short stories and four novels.
The first edition of Sherlock Holmes Handbook appeared in 1993. This edition catches up on new films, new books (a few with a hint of the supernatural) and the advent of the Internet, which has spread Holmes's fame and Sherlockian fun even further worldwide. The intervening years have brought three multi-volume editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories, with hundreds of footnotes providing new insights and new amusement. They have also seen Holmes repeatedly on the amateur and professional stages, including a few Canadian productions. And there have been changes to everything from copyright rules to libraries, booksellers and audio recordings.
close this panelChristopher Redmond has been studying and writing about Sherlock Holmes for twenty-five years and was for many years co-editor of Canadian Holmes. He is the author of In Bed with Sherlock Holmes and Welcome to America, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Redmond lives in Waterloo, Ontario.
close this panel"...an essential item for any serious Sherlockian. The ordinary Holmes fan may not be interested in the intricacies of the plots of each story, but the chapter on Fans and Followers is wonderful reading for just how the Sherlockian societies (there are hundreds) began and the rules they set. There is a section dealing with serious academic studies of Holmes, as well as Conan Doyle, and plenty useful information and fun trivia on the Victorian setting. Redmond, as befits a serious Sherlockian, puts this all down in fine scholarly style."
"The new edition...is the finest overview of the world of Holmes and the Holmesian that we're ever likely to see."
