The Heirs of Anthony Boucher Marvin Lachman

Fandom Before “The Revolution”
mes Journal, and over a half-century later, despite many changes of editors, it is still
published semiannually.
The Sherlock Holmes Journal started as a mimeographed magazine, but as membership
increased, the society was able to publish it on slick paper, using, appropriately,
the Baskerville typeface, and including illustrations. There have been news,
reviews, poetry, articles, and much material on Doyle, including a 1959 issue honoring
the centennial of his birth. James Edward Holroyd, the original co-editor, started
a column of short items, titled “The Egg-Spoon,” in the first issue.
Howlett appeared in that issue with film reviews and continued his work on the
magazine until his death in 2003. He was instrumental in a statue of Holmes being
placed near the Baker Street Underground station, and he was a major force in the
society’s 1968 pilgrimage to Switzerland that included a re-creation, in Victorian costume,
of the battle between Holmes and Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.
(At the end of the battle, two clothed dummies fell off the cliff into the Falls.)
The 2003 obituary for Anthony Howlett gave a positive view of Sherlockian fandom
in England, as, at first, did the death notices in 2004 for Richard Lancelyn Green,
former Chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Green had joined the
society at age twelve in 1965, after reading his first Holmes story. He was an obsessive
collector of material relating to Doyle and Holmes, owning one of the few surviving
copies of Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887, the first printing of A Study in Scarlet.
Green was also a scholar, earning an Edgar for his bibliography of Doyle. Ten days
after Green’s obituary was published, a Reuters dispatch reported there were mysterious
circumstances concerning Green’s death, saying he had been garroted with a
shoelace. There was an inquest, and the coroner was quoted as saying there was insufficient
evidence to rule whether Green’s death was murder, suicide, or a mistake.
The popularity of Sherlock Holmes continues, and it is an international phenomenon.
Peter Blau, who maintains a list of Sherlockian societies, reports, according to
the website Sherlockian.net, that there have been over 800 at one time or another,
with 277 active as of November 2004. Twenty nations have Sherlockian groups, including
twenty-two in Japan alone. There is even one in Kyrgyzstan! Forty-one of the
states in the US have these groups, with California, Illinois, and New York each having
more than twenty. They invariably have names imaginatively derived from the
Holmes tales, for example, Mrs. Hudson’s Cliffdwellers in New Jersey and the Sons of
the Copper Beeches of Philadelphia.
The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore (1923–)
There was fandom before Sherlockians organized. Honoring the man credited
with writing the first detective story, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore started
in 1923 and remains active. Its object: “promoting the understanding of Poe’s life and
writings, and his associations with Baltimore.” An annual lecture about Poe is given
on the first Sunday of each October. There have also been academic societies devoted
to Poe, and their newsletters sometimes included material of interest to fans.
Happy Hours Magazine (1925–1936) and Dime Novel Round-Up (1931–)
The term “Dime Novel” refers to paper-covered books, usually priced at a dime,
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