If you've been following this blog for awhile, two things that you might know about me are that I have a Sherlock Holmes library, not a collection, and that I have more than 80 copies of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
To be specific . . . well, I can't be specific. Whenever I think I know how many Hounds I have, I find another one tucked away somewhere. But whatever the number is, it just grew by one - and it's an ideal one for my library.
Ann (the woman in my life) gave me a copy of The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library edition for my recent birthday. It's an oversize paperback, edited and with annotations by the remarkable Leslie S. Klinger, and published by the admirable Gasogene Press. Nicholas Meyer, himself no slouch, wrote the introduction.
There's just no excuse for me not to already have all ten volumes of The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, but this only makes the third one on my shelves. That's a major lapse that I hope to remedy gradually. These books are invaluable for anyone who takes more than a casual approach to reading the Canon.
Klinger's modern classic, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes in three-volumes, is a must-have for any serious Sherlockian. The Reference Library, which came first, isn't as handsome or well-illustrated as its successor. But it's a lot easier to carry around the individual volumes to meetings of your local Sherlock Holmes society!
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