Sherlock Holmes fandom

Did You Know?

• Fans created some of the first fan fiction as early as about 1897 to 1902.
• Various cookbooks with a Victorian era Sherlockian theme have been published, including Dining with Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Cookbook (1976) and The Sherlock Holmes Victorian Cookbook (1997).
• Many authors have written biographies of Sherlock Holmes, such as William S. Baring-Gould's Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street (1962) and Nick Rennison's Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography (2005).

Societies

Organizations devoted to Sherlock Holmes have formed globally, with estimates of their number varying: one 1999 source states 375 groups, a 2001 source estimates at least 250, and a 2009 source reports more than 400 active societies. Members often play the Sherlockian game, analyzing stories under the premise that Holmes and Watson were real historical people, and also discuss adaptations and organize events. Many groups are geographically based but have online presences; some are entirely online, such as the Hounds of the Internet mailing list (founded 1992) and the John H Watson Society (founded 2013).

The oldest society is the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI), formed in New York in 1934 after a dinner hosted by Christopher Morley. BSI membership is by invitation only, with each member receiving an investiture; it was all-male until 1991. The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (ASH), founded in New York in the late 1960s and first led by Evelyn Herzog, is the oldest women's Sherlockian society. ASH protested the BSI's exclusion of women; in 1991, some Adventuresses were among the first women invested in the BSI, and that year a few men received honorary ASH membership. Men were admitted to full ASH membership in 2008.

Fan sites and podcasts

As of 2009, several major websites are devoted to Sherlock Holmes, including Sherlockian.net (established 1994 as the first online resource), The Best of Sherlock Holmes (featuring best lists and items related to Holmes and Conan Doyle), and Camden House (an online collection of original stories and illustrations). Some societies, like the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, also maintain websites. The Hounds of the Internet, a listserv founded in the early 1990s and hosted by the University of Edinburgh, is open to anyone interested in Holmes; its 170+ members post messages in English, issued in daily digest form, with Alexander Braun as current Listmaster.

The podcast I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, launched in 2007, covers Holmes news and popular culture, releasing episodes twice monthly; it had over ten thousand Twitter followers as of 2020 and 196 episodes by July 2020, featuring interviews with figures such as Bert Coules, Laurie R. King, and Leslie S. Klinger. Its team launched a separate podcast, Sherlock Holmes: Trifles, in 2017, a shorter weekly show with 187 episodes as of July 2020. The Baker Street Babes, an all-female group, host a podcast that began in 2011, with 88 episodes as of July 2020 and over forty thousand Twitter followers.

Tourism

Sherlock Holmes tours in London are a thriving business as of 2018, typically starting at Piccadilly Circus and covering locations mentioned in the stories or used as filming sites. Thousands visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum annually, which officially bears the address 221B Baker Street. A pub named The Sherlock Holmes, located in Charing Cross, is decorated with Holmes-related objects and photographs. A statue of Holmes outside Baker Street tube station was unveiled in 1999.

Tours are also offered in Dartmoor, the setting for The Hound of the Baskervilles, and at Undershaw, Conan Doyle's former home in southeast England. A statue of Holmes by Gerald Laing was installed in Edinburgh in 1989 near Conan Doyle's birthplace. Fans make pilgrimages to Meiringen, Switzerland, and the Reichenbach Falls, where Holmes confronts Professor Moriarty in The Final Problem; the Sherlock Holmes Society of London has organized group trips there since 1968.

Museums exist in Meiringen and Lucens, Switzerland. The world's first statue of Holmes, sculpted by John Doubleday, was unveiled in Meiringen in September 1988; Doubleday also sculpted the London statue. The world's second statue, by Yoshinori Satoh, was erected in October 1988 in Karuizawa, Japan, by the Japan Sherlock Holmes Club to commemorate Ken Nobuhara, the first translator of all the stories into Japanese. A sculpture of Holmes and Watson was unveiled in Moscow in 2007 outside the British embassy, based on Sidney Paget's illustrations and portrayals by actors Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin; Livanov helped design it.

Collections

Some fans collect Sherlock Holmes items, ranging from broad collections of books and objects to specific items like first editions or foreign language translations. Stamp collectors can find Holmesian stamps from the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and other territories; coin collectors have Holmesian coins from Gibraltar and the Cook Islands. Noted Sherlockian John Bennett Shaw, an investitured BSI member, amassed what was once the world's largest Holmes collection, including books, recordings, and advertising; he compiled The Basic Holmesian Library, a list of 100 essential items.

Shaw's collection was bequeathed to the University of Minnesota upon his death in 1994, and formally dedicated there in 1995. As of 2015, the university's Sherlock Holmes Collections, the world's largest archive of such materials, contain over 60,000 items, including objects related to Conan Doyle, and are generally not displayed. The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library, started in 1969 with a purchase from a private collector's estate, comprises over 25,000 items displayed in a room styled after Holmes's Baker Street study.

Richard Lancelyn Green's large collection was bequeathed to the Portsmouth City Museum. The London pub The Sherlock Holmes also displays a large collection of memorabilia.