The Basic Holmesian Library

As I insisted in my very first post on this blog, I am not a collector. Still, I have a few (hundred) books about Sherlock Holmes.

I have in my files a photocopy of John Bennett Shaw's  1984 revision of his The Basic One Hundred: A Sherlock Holmes Library. The revision numbers 102 books. I've been told that Mr. Shaw added more books before his death in 1994, but I was interested in what a modern Sherlockian collector would add. So asked Paul Herbert, BSI.

Paul wrote:

The books I would add are mainly reference books.    They would include the following:

A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle by Richard Lancelyn Green and John Michael Gibson

The Universal Sherlock Holmes by Ronald B. De Waal (5 volumes including the Index)

The Television Sherlock Holmes by Peter Haining

The New Good Old Index by William D. Goodrich

The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library edited and annotated by Leslie S. Klinger (10 volumes)

              -updated and superior to the Baring-Gould Annotated

A Sherlock Holmes Handbook by Christopher Redmond

Paul's invaluable book-length study of parodies and pastiches, The Sincerest Form of Flattery, is on the original Shaw  list. If you are interested in the list, Gary L. Miller, Doylean and Sherlockian Bibliophile, sells a printed version at a very modest cost. You can contact him at garymsherlock@comcast.bnet.

 

What would you add to a "must have" list for a Sherlockian library?