I'm a Sherlockian...
I’m a busy person, but I enjoy reading about Sherlock Holmes. (If I'm British, I call myself a Holmesian [HOLMS-ee-an or hole-ME-see-an], Americans call ourselves Sherlockians [shur-LOCK-ee-ans].)
I belong to at least one club that gets together to have dinner and talk about the consulting detective we call The Master. I collect Sherlockian items: maybe just a few things I got as presents because people know I like Sherlock Holmes or maybe I have a room (or more than one!) devoted to books and Sherlockian memorabilia.
I’ve read almost all the Canon and I have some favorites. I’m a bit of a specialist on some aspect of the stories – just by reading Arthur Conan Doyle I know quite a bit about the Victorian era. I’ve probably given a couple of talks about Sherlock Holmes and I may even have written a poem or a toast for a meeting.
I like introducing people to the Sherlock Holmes stories.
As a Sherlock Holmes fan, you’ll find information here to get you started. Read some suggestions and try out the links on this page:
- Get your adult book club to read The Hound of the Baskervilles. Encourage members to pass the novel along to the young people in the household afterward.
- Go around having fun with your scion. Publicize the interesting and amusing things you do. Invite young people to come along.
- Offer to read a Sherlock Holmes story to a young audience at a local bookstore or library (in costume or not). Because they were originally written for the Strand magazine, the stories are very similar in length. It typically takes 45 minutes to an hour to read a Sherlock Holmes story aloud.
- Take a Sherlock Holmes book to a family gathering and read to the kids. If anyone shares your interest, you'll know who should inherit your collection when you're beyond the Reichenbach!
- Get some friends and perform your own version of An Evening with Sherlock Holmes at a local library. Some Sherlockian groups enjoy doing staged readings (also called "Readers' Theater" or "Radio Plays") of stories adapted from the Canon. The late Bob Robinson wrote several scripts for the Hansom Wheels of South Carolina scion. (Note that some plays have extra characters to accommodate additional, usually female, readers.) Marino Alvarez has also done a short adaptation of The Red-Headed League.
Donate some of your books to a school or library. Even if the library sells them for funding, you’ve done something good for your community. Or you could sell them yourself and give your library a brand-new copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Leslie Klinger's New Annotated Sherlock Holmes.
What can I do to help the Beacon Society?
- Organize a Sherlockian Book Drive.
- Join a Sherlockian scion that likes to involve young people or volunteer to chair a youth project for your scion.
- Help your scion set up a Sherlock Holmes exhibit in your local library. Rotate it to other libraries in the district.
- Dress up as Sherlock Holmes and visit a school (bring a friend along as Watson or Irene Adler!)
What can I do to help the Beacon Society?
- Buy old Sherlock Holmes books at used book fairs and give them to young people you meet. Never underestimate the personal touch. Ultimately, this may be the most powerful method we have for spreading the word about Holmes.
- Look for projects for young people that might have a Sherlockian "hook" and volunteer to help.
- Help someone apply for a Jan Stauber Grant to help a project along.
- Nominate good Sherlockian teaching projects for a Beacon Award.
- Tell our Program Committee about your scion’s teaching activities so we can share them on the website.
- Buy a Beacon Society lapel pin.
- Donate to the Beacon Society.
Judith Freeman developed a wonderful paper on how to create or maintain a scion society... you ask, what is a scion society? Click here and and find out what thousands around the U.S. enjoy.