Disjecta Membra (Baker Street Irregulars History Series)

Review: The latest book in the Baker Street Irregulars History Series is Jon Lellenberg’s Disjecta Membra, ‘a catch-up collection of items, reproduced in facsimile, which came too late to be included in the 1930s and 40s volumes’. For the most part these documents are peripheral to the main argument of the history project, but how fascinating it is to read the letters and notes of Vincent Starrett, Christopher Morley, William Gillette, Edgar W. Smith and others (including the egregious Alexander Woollcott) as they originally appeared!

There are side-lights on the early classic studies of the life and times of Holmes & Watson, on the birth and development of the BSI, on the poverty of the great illustrator Frederic Dorr Steele, on the madness of the Conan Doyle brothers - and much more, all presented with Jon Lellenberg’s customary incisive wit.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 208, 2001]