Bookfellows:

The Private Lives of Vincent Starrett and Sherlock Holmes.

Anyone who has dropped in on this blog over the years knows that the life and writings of Vincent Starrett has been a passion of mine. For the last five years, I’ve been working to take that energy and put it into the first full biography of the man, from his 1886 birth in Toronto, through his long career as a writer, to his death in 1974 in Chicago and his ongoing legacy.

I’m delighted to say that Wessex Press has agreed to publish the book. We signed a contract in November and plan to have the book ready by October, where it will be available for those attending the Vincent Starrett conference outside Chicago.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but I want to say upfront that the encouragement I’ve received from readers of this blog and its sister Facebook group has made all this a true pleasure.

Here are the details.

Wessex Press

Anyone familiar with the world of Sherlock Holmes also knows the Wessex Press and its Gasogene Books imprint. The principals behind the imprint, Steve Doyle and Mark Gagen, were willing to take a chance and add this biography to their list. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to them.

As you can see from the flyer that was distributed during the Baker Street Irregular’s annual New York City celebrations in January, I worked with Steve and Mark on the 75th anniversary edition of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes back in 2008. That book quickly sold out and has become a collector’s item in its own right.

It’s an honor to be working with them on this new venture and I hope it will be every bit as successful.

Bookfellows: The Private Lives of Vincent Starrett and Sherlock Holmes

Starrett’s autobiography is good, but is incomplete in many ways.

Recounting the story of Starrett’s life was both a pleasure and a great challenge. I’ve been gathering information about Starrett for decades, starting with his books and other writings about Holmes and then extending through his poetry, books about authors and collecting, detective tales and his long-time Chicago Tribune column. A few years back, I spent many happy hours at the University of Minnesota’s Andersen Library with two packed carts of files of its extensive Starrett holdings. Other libraries were equally helpful in sharing their resources and suggesting new avenues to pursue.

Starrett’s autobiography, Born in a Bookshop, was helpful in many ways, but it was also frustratingly incomplete. Starrett’s original manuscript was considerably longer than the 1965 book published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Whole chapters were removed and as a result, many vital elements of his life were lost.

A late-in-life photograph of Ray and Vincent playing chess in their Chicago apartment.

For example, Rachel Latimer Starrett, his second wife, makes only a cameo appearance in the autobiography. That’s a shame. Vincent loved Rachel (whom he called Ray) and she returned that love with all that she could give.

She desperately wanted to be Starrett’s wife and for years Starrett tried to get a divorce from his first wife, Lillian Hartsig Starrett, but to no avail. For more than a decade, Ray and Vincent’s relationship was largely conducted in secret, except for those rare times when they were not in Chicago. The long story of their courtship and marriage deserves to be told in full, and I’ve done my best to do so. There are many more details about Starrett’s life, writings and personal experiences to share.

It’s important to know that this has not been one lone person’s quest.

Starrett’s extended family has helped to offer insight and history and their information has been invaluable.

Other Starrett fans along with many, many friends who have become experts in the early years of the Baker Street Irregulars have generously lent their time, knowledge and collections.

I’ve been fortunate to gather a few hundred letters from Starrett to his friends and colleagues, which also fill out the picture of his life.

As you can guess, the list of acknowledgments at the end of the manuscript is both long and inspirting.

I can’t thank all of you enough.

The dust jacket cover to the 1933 edition of *The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes*.

If there was one constant in Starrett’s life, it was his love affair with books, particularly the books about Sherlock Holmes. More than once he said he enjoyed a “lifetime of Conan Doyle idolatry,” starting as a boy reading the original Holmes stories at his aunts’ home in Toronto, continuing through his years as a book collector in Chicago, and reaching its zenith when he published, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes in 1933. That book became his one and only international best-seller.

From that point on, he was often called the man who knew more about Sherlock Holmes than Conan Doyle himself. He never disputed the claim.

Just as importantly for us, Private Life also sparked an interest in Holmes among men and women around the county, especially New York writer, columnist and poet Christopher Morley. Morley was already planning a dinner to celebrate Holmes and enthusiastically invited Starrett to come to New York and join in on the celebration. Starrett, in turn, invited William Gillette (the living embodiment of Holmes on stage for generations of fans) and Alexander Woollcott, the Algonquin Round table bad boy who brought both fame and infamy to the evening.

Thus was the Baker Street Irregulars—and its many offspring—born.

But the Starrett-Holmes connection is only part of the story.

Check it out! A conference dedicated just to Vincent Starrett. Go to the website listed on this flyer for more details. Registration is open. Hurry!

Like the many works of Conan Doyle which lie forgotten in the long shadow of his famous detective, so Starrett’s own extensive and diverse output has slipped into the dark shelves of forgotten bookshops.

I’ve tried to shine a light on these parts of his life in this blog. But over the years I came to recognize that if Starrett’s career and influence are to be truly appreciated and preserved, his story needed to be told in full and preserved between hard covers.

And here’s the true delight in this venture: The book will have its debut this October in a Chicagoland conference dedicated to the great man himself.

“And It Is Always 1895” is the brainchild of Jonathan Shimberg and Linda Crohn, with the help of many members of The Torists International SS. There is a stellar lineup of speakers who will offer diverse perspectives on the life, writings and influence of The Last Bookman.

Registration for the conference is now open. I hope to see you there.