What Every Sherlockian Should Read

Publisher Steve Doyle and The Baker Street Journal

I’m sorry to put this in the past tense, but it used to be that every community had a newspaper, and that paper helped to hold the community together by giving it a common frame of reference.

Holding a community together is what The Baker Street Journaldoes for Sherlockians, especially in the United States but also around the world. The best reason to subscribe to the BSJ is that it’s great reading, but the next best reason is that it’s what other Sherlockians are reading.

If you need a third reason, the fifth issue every year is a Christmas Annual devoted to one topic. It’s always outstanding. The 2019 issue provided a fascinating look at William S. Baring-Gould, author of Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street and The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

More than a year ago I gave a talk to a scion society about certain aspects of the Canon. One of the members was kind enough to say the talk should appear in the BSJ. With some embarrassment I replied that it already had. “I guess you can tell I don’t subscribe,” the person said.

Bad move. Every Sherlockian should subscribe. I did for a year in the early 1970s, then I fell into apostasy for about 40 years. I missed a lot, but I caught up by acquiring the incredibly useful e-Baker Street Journal, which has all the issues from 1946 through 2011 on CD-ROM.

If you’re not a current subscriber, check out the website.  

Full disclosure: I’ve had the great pleasure of seeing four of my articles published in the BSJ in the past three years, something I never dreamed of when I read the journal at the Cincinnati Public Library as a pre-teen. Canadian Holmes and England’s Sherlock Holmes Journalare also stellar publications.