The Sherlock Holmes Club

Abstract

When and where did Sherlockians first congregate to exercise their enthusiasm for the Canon? We cannot be certain, but we do know it was a long time ago and maybe (or maybe not) far, far away upon the horizon. As Julia Rosenblatt wrote in the Summer 2000 issue of the Baker Street Journal, "The 20th century brought us the first organized groups devoted to Sherlock Holmes. There may have been some before that, but the first documented group was formed during the 1902-1903 winter semester at Erlangen University in Germany. At about the same time, Christopher Morley had been gathering with a few of his high-school chums in Baltimore to form a Sherlock Holmes Club, just getting into practice, we may presume, for the Baker Street Irregulars … ." So, as Professor Rosenblatt notes, there were occasional, fairly brief episodes of Sherlockian organization in the early 20th century, before the foundings of the BSI in New York City and the Sherlock Holmes Society in London. But were there any substantial forebears — any organizers of and participants in the kind of sustained Sherlockian activity that took root in the mid-1930s and flowered after World War II? Yes.

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