When I suggested on Facebook that the new Spring 2019 edition The Baker Street Journal was one of the
best, I was thinking of the interesting and insightful articles by Dana
Cameron, Carla Coupe, Monica Schmidt, Dino Argyropoulos, Ken Ludwig, and
others.
But I must admit to a certain bias in the matter because
this issue also contains my third contribution to the BSJ, “Freddy the Porcine Holmes.” It explores the connections between
two of my childhood heroes, Freddy and the Pig and Sherlock Holmes. I’ve
written about Freddy before on this blog, especially here
and here and here.
Re-reading the 25 Freddy novels and his collected poems was
my first retirement project in October 2017. I did so with pen and file cards
in hand with the intention of finding all the Holmes references and writing an
article for the BSJ. Mission
accomplished!
And being published in the BSJ is an accomplishment indeed. The blurb on its website tells the
simple truth: “The Baker Street Journal
continues to be the leading Sherlockian publication since its founding in 1946
by Edgar W. Smith. With both serious scholarship and articles that ‘play the
game,’ the Journal is essential
reading for anyone interested in Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a
world where it is always 1895.”
I began subscribing in the early 1970s while I was in
college. Life intervened and my subscription went on a Great Hiatus for about
four decades. I made up for that, though, by buying the e-BSJ, which makes all the issues up to 2011 available in on a
searchable CD-ROM. It’s an invaluable research tool.
If you are a Sherlockian and you don’t subscribe to the BSJ,
do it right now. Not only is it everything noted
above, it’s what other Sherlockians are reading!
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