So, I’m thinking Christmas already. My boyfriend is a HUGE Sherlock Holmes fan. A few years ago I gave him those nice new annotated sets, which he loves. He also has the Grenada DVDs, with Jeremy Brett. He’s the kind of guy who loves nice old stuff, though, although he doesn’t treat himself much and he doesn’t have a lot of money.
Also, Christmas and his birthday are fairly close together.
So, I was thinking I’d see about getting some sort of early edition with the Paget illustrations, which I know he’d adore. That’s kind of easy.
What else could I get? He’s not a huge fan of Basil Rathborne, so those movie posters are out. Something cool and old is way better than something cool and new. Last year I hunted all around for a real calabash (gourd) pipe, and struck out - he’s got tons of pipes, though, several of which I gave him, so a pipe isn’t great. I’m nowhere near as into this as he is, so I don’t really have a handle on the kind of things that are available. I also don’t have millions of dollars to spend, although I’ll spend a few hundred on something that’s cool enough. Any suggestions?
Seems like I’ve seen some issues of The Strand magazine on E-Bay for not outrageous prices. An issue with a Holmes story (or part of one) might be cool.
Does he have any interest in reading Sherlock Holmes novels written by people other than Doyle? I have a huge collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. I could send you the titles of them if you’d like. You should be able to find many of them easily enough.
There are TWO annotated sets, you know – the one from the 60s by William S. Baring-Gould, and the recent one by Leslie Klinger. Whichever set you got, he might like the other one. The Klinger set is very scholarly, and somewhat dry (IMHO) while the Baring-Gould set is way more fun.
Example: when it comes to dating a story, the Klinger set has a table of what 20 different scholars set as the date. The Gardner goes through his own logic: “Watson says that story happened on a Tuesday in May of 1895. We know that it rained the night before, so the only rainy Monday in May, 1895 was…” Way more fun.
The other thing you could do is go to the Baker Street Museum in London: http://www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk/ and look at their shop, lots of merchandise.
He has the recent annotated set. I’ll look into the 60’s one.
What he’d really love is some sort of weird bizarre Victorian Sherlockian kitsch, if I knew the right keywords. Warning about the museum - it plays music and turning it off doesn’t turn it off.
I’m thinking instead of a first edition book I might get him one of those collected Strand volumes, which has the whole thing for whatever year is being collected - I think he might enjoy seeing the stories in context with the other stuff a contemporary reader would have been interested in. Some of those are fairly inexpensive for decent copies.
Damn, though, some of this stuff is expensive. Last year I found him some antiquarian Masonic books and that stuff is light years less rich. The easiest way to find the kind of things you’re looking for on alibris and filter out the crap, by the way, is to sort highest to lowest price and then go to page 3 or 4. Page one is extremely entertaining.
Warning about the museum - it plays music and turning it off doesn’t turn it off.