The Baker Street Journal (BSJ, which you can subscribe to at https://bakerstreetirregulars.com/the-baker-street-journal) publishes four regular issues each year, and a 'Christmas Annual' (a fifth issue). In the 'modern era' (if that's a thing) the Christmas Annual has been produced each year since 1998. Each Christmas Annual is a special issue that focuses on a single topic. A complete list of issues from 1998 to the present time can be found at the BSJ site (https://bakerstreetirregulars.com/bsj-christmas-annual). This series of Annuals from 1998 to present is actually the second time Christmas Annuals have been published by the BSJ.
Edgar J. Smith launched the BSJ in 1946. The BSJ didn't survive long and failed in 1949, but was relaunched in 1951 and continues to this day. Under Smith's editorship, the BSK released five Christmas Annuals, the first being in 1956, and the fifth and final being published for 1960. The original Annuals contained collections of articles (not too dissimilar from a typical BSJ issue of the time).
I recently managed to pick up a set of this original set of Christmas Annuals at Second Story Books in Rockville MD.
Each issue carries a near identical cover design with a different color, with a design replicating that of the 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual that carried the first Holmes story. The concept of the BSJ Christmas Annual is inspired by the Beeton's Christmas Annual issue that is central to the history of Sherlock Holmes publishing, and also captures the mystery of such a rare and valuable issue.
The opening of the 1956 (first) and 1960 (final) Christmas Annuals capture the inspiration for the launch of the special issues, and also the reason for their termination. I've decided to transcribe those pages here.
First is the editorial that opened the 1956 issue:
1956 Christmas Annual
The Editors Gas-Lamp
TO MRS. BEETON
It is to Mrs. Beeton that the glory belongs. Some time, somewhere, in middling-to-late Victorian England - though the record sheweth not the date or place - this good lady, who is known to us only by her unadorned surname, conceived the idea of catering to the tastes of her more sensationally-minded countrymen by offering then, once a year, for the small sum of one shilling, a shocker given over to the celebration of gore and low adventure. She called her little paperback - in deference to the time of year at which it appeared, surely, and not because of any beatific attributes in its content - a Christmas Annual; and it was, on all the evidence, a thumping success both of esteem and of the fisc. For we know that it found its way, after not too long, into the hands of the highly respectable publishing firm of Ward, Lock, & Co., of London, New York and Melbourne - if, indeed, it had not been there from the beginning.
We are sentimentally and curiously concerned with the early history of Beeton's Christnmas Annual only for the reason that we know so little about it. The important thing is that, in the year 1887 - but which time Mrs. Beeton herself may have become merely the editor, or no more than the fiction and symbol of sponsorship she had perhaps always been - Ward, Lock & Co. accepted, in behalf of the magazine, a tattered and often-rejected manuscript submitted by a young doctor who had never made much of a success of his profession, and thereby launched him on a career that brought wordly fame to him and unworldly ecstacy to prcessinoal generations of his readers. There were other tales to come, and other publishers to nourish them and profit by their ineffable popularity; but the glory is, and ever will be, Mrs. Beeton's. It was she, or whoever she stood for, who had the courage and the vision t ogive to mankind A Study in Scarlet - and with it Sherlock Holmes.
By the process of a literary mutation with which the botanical world is unfamiliar, this Annual has become a perennial. It stands as the cornerstone of every respectable collection of the first editions of the writings of Dr. John H. Watson. Is is as fresh today as it was on that December day sixty-nine years ago when it was first put forth. Its excessive rarity gives it a worth multiplies its intrinsic worthiness, and its fading pages convey a sense of the time and place in which the Lauriston Gardens mystery occurred that not other pages, however beautifully printed, can possibly provide. It is, for Sherlockians, the book of Genesis.
To publish a Christmas Annual inspired by Mrs. Beeton's is a temerarious undertaking. The cover is in simulation - and there can be no doubt, but the way, as to who the man rising from his chemical table to light his gas-lamp really is - even if the contents are not. But even if there is no new tale of Sherlock Holmes included in the text - along with two "original drawing-room plays" - there is, at least, good talk about the Great Detective and the things he said and did, and the JOURNAL is proud and happy to present its own Annual to a world which is, we hope, prepared for it by the example Mrs. Beeton set.
And so we are left to ask what caused the end to the Christmas Annual after 1960? The answer lies in the black-bordered opening to the 1960 issue announcing the death of Edgar Smith (with an opening sentence lifted from a Holmes story as tribute). The following page opens ATTENTA! and reveals that the 1960 Christmas Annual was compiled from the material prepared by Smith.
1960 Christmas Annual
In Memoriam
Edgar Wadsworth Smith
1 April 1894 - 17 September 1960
It is with an unusually heavy heart that I have to record the loss of hom whom I shall ever regard as the best and wisest man whom I have ever known. As we of the Baker Street Irregulars turn down an empty glass for him, it is not only sad, but it is also extremely difficult to believe that we have stood out on the terrace with him for the last time and have had our last quiet talk with Edgar Smith.
To the world in general Edgar Smith was known as one who had achieved great success in the field of business. Those who were acquainted with him found him also to be a man of profound scholarship. But we, who were fortunate enough to know him well, realize that he was that rare paragon - a perfect gentleman and a real scholar with the gift of evoking sincere friendship.
His activities led him into many fields, and there is nothing he touched that he did not improve. Certainly, there is no one who can take his place. We have lost the truly indispensable man, and we cannot expect ever to look upon his like again within our lifetime.
"Si monumentum quoeris, circumspice"
JW, M.D.
1960 Christmas Annual
ATTENTA! ATTENTA! ATTENTA!
A Notice to the Readers of The Baker Street Journal
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A JOURNAL!
This issue was prepared by Edgar W. Smith, the only editor the Journal ever had up to the present time. Practically all of the material was selected and typed by him, and was found among his papers.
And so the BSJ did live on, but from 1960 till 1997 the Baker Street Journal Christmas Annual was not produced, till it emerged again as a fine tradition from 1998 onwards.
NOTE: One of the copies above lists a price on the cover. I'm too scared to 'erase' it, but it is certainly NOT the price I'd have paid (or could pay, for that matter) for this set!
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