Freddy and Me and the Baker Street Journal

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!