Miscellaneous Monday—Number Thirty-one

BACK IN THE middle of the 20th century one of the editors of The Strand compiled into a book the notes he made of the time that he had spent with the magazine; while it's of interest to general readers, several chapters do briefly offer some tidbits about crime and detective fiction authors . . .

Mirror of the Century: The Strand Magazine, 1891-1950 (1950; 1966 reprint) (full text HERE).
By Reginald Pound (FictionMags HERE).

Chapter Five: "Enter Sherlock Holmes" (8 pages; HERE).

. . . "the greatest short story writer since Edgar Allan Poe" . . . "a gift from Heaven" . . . "the great defect of most detective fiction" . . . "of infinitely wider appeal than Poe's Dupin and Gaboriau's Tabaret and Lecoq" . . . "the Holmes of Paget's imagination rather than of Conan Doyle's" . . . "Why, there's Sherlock Holmes!" . . . "the deerstalker cap which assisted the fixation of Sherlock Holmes in the public mind" . . . "he bravely tried to restore the historical novel to the popular favour" . . . "as a writer he was unique" . . . "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!" . . . "Poor Holmes is dead and damned" . . . "You brute!" 
. . . "a literary cult of exceptional vitality" . . . "I am weary of his name" . . . "Doyle had devised a new fiction form" . . . "He appeared drained of gener-osity".

". . . he was unique . . ."

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Chapter Ten: "Famous 'Strand' Story Writers" (17 pages; HERE).

. . . "'Let's Keep Holmes Alive' clubs were formed" . . . "outlying groups dedicated to the perpetuation of Holmes as a figure of awesome regard" . . . "The Turks in 1920 believed him capable of being up to no good" . . . "a vitality that has passed from the surprising to the inexplicable" . . . "to the bookstalls with the fierce resolve of shoppers at the January sales" . . . "credulous and uncritical" . . . "ineptitude in certain matters of scientific detail" . . . "a Holmes furore over there" . . . "closing time at the library was extended by half an hour" . . . "any immediate anxiety for money soon disappeared" . . . "content with the surer profits".

The last story.

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Chapter Thirteen: "Conan Doyle and the Fairies" (13 pages; HERE).

. . . "he had not distinguished himself as a war historian" . . . "a thinner magazine became inevitable" . . . "foiling the machinations of a German villain named Von Bork" . . . "the sense of humour, concerning which Englishmen tended to behave as if they held the world copyright" . . . "Plots sprang up at a wave of his ridiculously long cigarette holder" . . . "the peak of a fame that eclipsed Conan Doyle's with the new reading public" . . . "He was not so fastidious about firearms as James Bond" . . . "a society for the extermination of unpleasing individuals" . . . "grades of living beyond our dimension" . . . "Conan Doyle's latest psychic obsession" . . . "I can only write what comes to me".

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Chapter Fourteen: "Farewell to Sherlock Holmes" (11 pages; HERE).

. . . "Wonderful is the atmosphere of war." . . . "the most absurdly memorable fiction character of our time" . . . "The last of the fifty-six Sherlock Holmes stories published in The Strand through thirty-six years appeared in the issue for April 1927." . . . "a sterling example of the patience and loyalty of the British public" . . . "Despite many inducements, he had remained faithful to The Strand" . . . "as formula-ridden as their commercial counterparts" . . . "it is inconceivable, incredible and fantastic" . . . "he settled down to write two novels a year by dictating an average of 4,000 words a day, four days a week. He kept it up for thirty years" . . . "the fecundity and inventiveness of Simenon".

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Resources:
- For more about The Strand, see Wikipedia (HERE).
- Our last Miscellaneous Monday took a sharp turn into thespian territory (HERE).
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