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charloweenToday I spent a pleasurable afternoon at the Toronto Reference Library, reading through issues of the Baker Street Journal dating from 1946 to 1948.
These are Sherlock Holmes fanzines from the 40s! Full of what today we'd call meta and fic* (and poetry! oh man: the poetry), all charmingly American and self-important about how much they love Sherlock Holmes.
*One of them had angels who'd formed their own fan club (sorry, their own Scion Society of the Baker Street Irregulars). The recently-dead Arthur Conan Doyle wins their annualfic pastiche contest. Fic from 1948, I kid you not.
And oh, they really loved Sherlock Holmes. It's all fairly tongue-in-cheek, at least I think it is, but still it's interesting to look at this early expression of organized fandom from what I know of present-day media fandom.
Here are three bits from Edgar W. Smith's 1946 editorial found in Vol 1, No 3 (p243-244):
"... Sherlock Holmes belongs to all the world. Like any other man who was ever lived, the very fact of his existence has put him, in the best and most broadest meaning of the term, securely in the public domain. And since he is, in consequence, the unalienable property of our minds and our affections, we feel a sense of wonderment and something close to pity in the presence of those unperceiving souls who would check us in our urge to think and talk and write about him as we please. For think and talk and write we well: there is no such thing, in ethics or in morals, as a copyright on reality."
On film adaptations: "We have writhed in open agony at the spectacle of our rugged Boswell transmogrified into the semblance of a doddering buffoon... We have resisted every temptation to modernize the scene in Baker street..."
"...we shall continue to take our Holmes and Watson straight [HA!], safe in the revelation of Canon as it is writ, and undeterred in our endeavors [sic] by the threats of men who know not what they do. Theirs is the world of make-believe. Our is the legend come to life."
Speaking of their "rugged Boswell", there is a fascination with Watson in these early issues. Rex Stout's "Watson Was A Woman" had been published by this point, so I betting that's why there's an entertaining push in these semi-serious essays to prove Watson's lady-killing status and masculine virility. If you haven't read Stout's piece, it's hilarious: it lists all the most charmingly domestic scenes in the books, and uses them to prove that "Watson" was in fact Holmes's wife.
I'm also a fan of Smith's line "the unalienable property of our minds and our affections".
These are Sherlock Holmes fanzines from the 40s! Full of what today we'd call meta and fic* (and poetry! oh man: the poetry), all charmingly American and self-important about how much they love Sherlock Holmes.
*One of them had angels who'd formed their own fan club (sorry, their own Scion Society of the Baker Street Irregulars). The recently-dead Arthur Conan Doyle wins their annual
And oh, they really loved Sherlock Holmes. It's all fairly tongue-in-cheek, at least I think it is, but still it's interesting to look at this early expression of organized fandom from what I know of present-day media fandom.
Here are three bits from Edgar W. Smith's 1946 editorial found in Vol 1, No 3 (p243-244):
"... Sherlock Holmes belongs to all the world. Like any other man who was ever lived, the very fact of his existence has put him, in the best and most broadest meaning of the term, securely in the public domain. And since he is, in consequence, the unalienable property of our minds and our affections, we feel a sense of wonderment and something close to pity in the presence of those unperceiving souls who would check us in our urge to think and talk and write about him as we please. For think and talk and write we well: there is no such thing, in ethics or in morals, as a copyright on reality."
On film adaptations: "We have writhed in open agony at the spectacle of our rugged Boswell transmogrified into the semblance of a doddering buffoon... We have resisted every temptation to modernize the scene in Baker street..."
"...we shall continue to take our Holmes and Watson straight [HA!], safe in the revelation of Canon as it is writ, and undeterred in our endeavors [sic] by the threats of men who know not what they do. Theirs is the world of make-believe. Our is the legend come to life."
Speaking of their "rugged Boswell", there is a fascination with Watson in these early issues. Rex Stout's "Watson Was A Woman" had been published by this point, so I betting that's why there's an entertaining push in these semi-serious essays to prove Watson's lady-killing status and masculine virility. If you haven't read Stout's piece, it's hilarious: it lists all the most charmingly domestic scenes in the books, and uses them to prove that "Watson" was in fact Holmes's wife.
I'm also a fan of Smith's line "the unalienable property of our minds and our affections".
