The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Public Library

I've previously posted about the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at Toronto Public Library, and the 'Friends' of that Collection (https://221bcooee.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-magic-door-newsletter-and-edinburgh.html). 

Well, I'm on a 'spring break' vacation visiting a couple of Canadian cities with the family. 'Spring' is misleading advertising as it's cold and snow. One upside of the trip is that I was lucky enough to visit the Toronto Public Library (on Mon 25th March), and received a tour from Jessie Amaolo (Services Specialist with the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection) and Peggy MacFarlane (who is the Senior Services Specialist, Collections). I met Jessie in January at her first BSI Weekend, and Peggy is well known for her contributions to the ACD Society and her talents include preparing jockeys and steeds for the annual Doylean Honors/Wessex Cup.

The history of the ACD Collection is well covered at both the TPL site (https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/books-video-music/specialized-collections/literature-genre-doyle.jsp) and the site for the Friends of the collection (http://www.acdfriends.org). Briefly, this remarkable collection totals over 25,000 items and is growing. It was formed around a library purchase of a few hundred books belonging to Arthur Vincent Baillie (of whom I can find nothing) in 1969 and it has never looked back. The Library receives donations, but also actively purchases items to fill out its collection, and some of the many gems include original Doyle manuscripts, notebooks, a copy of Beeton's Christmas annual, and an illustration by each of Paget and Dorr Steele!

The main room is beautiful (see above) and custom built with a design nod towards the 221B study. The walls are lined with books by Doyle, along with Doylean and Sherlockian publications. Matilda and Tessa joined me for the visit, and I spent some time learning about the collection. It's truly remarkable that the TPL is dedicated to maintaining and building the ACD Collection - one of the finest and largest in the world.

When I arrived, Jessie had pulled some items from the stored items to show me. What they were I did not know, and they were arranged in their storage boxes and packets on the desk.

While I can't show ALL these items on a blog post (and I'm not sure anyone wants that anyway), I do want to highlight some of the special things I was shown.

The first item opened absolutely floored me. Jessie opened a complex document box to lift out and reveal a beautiful copy of the 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual complete - among other things the world's most expensive magazine. This copy has its original wrappers and advertisements. The cover was so bright and fresh, and 'A Study in Scarlet' can still be seen on the spine. According to Randall Scott, this was the copy used by Edgar W Smith to produce the 1960 BSI facsimile (www.bestofsherlock.com/beetons-christmas-annual.htm#R15). While I was too scared to touch or turn the pages, my hosts were happy to open the copy to the title page and reveal the facing illustration, and point out some of the quaint advertisements.

I was given the opportunity to hold the Beeton's for a photo. I was so amazed (probably evident in my dimpled face), but was too scared to hold the magazine much beyond the horizontal despite encouragement.

The next item was volume 1 of the original manuscript for ACD's Angels of Darkness. This was an early play that is NOT Sherlockian, but features a Dr. Watson and many of the names and Utah events from A Study in Scarlet. The manuscript was beautifully hand-written in an exercise book style notebook. The Baker Street Irregulars Press have published a facsimilie of part of this mansucript (bakerstreetirregulars.com/2001/12/30/angels-of-darkness) in 2001. I'm intrigued by the pages removed from the beginning. The TPL was bequeathed this manuscript by Anna Conan Doyle, Adrian Conan Doyle's widow, and the Library received the manuscript in 1992.

The next item is an absolute beauty - a UK first edition of the Hound of the Baskervilles. The cover design is absolutely beautiful, and while it's my favorite story, I've never held or leafed through a First Edition. If I accidentally found money, this is the book I'd buy. My favorite thing to do is try and trace previous owners of books, and so I want to know: who was Dollie Schiitze who received this book in April 1907. It's a UK print, but the name is solidly German, but Dollie suggests American. I had no luck looking in UK and US censuses. Anyway, the book is beautiful!!

Next is a piece of ephemera that was acquired relatively recently by the library. It is an undated letter from ACD to Sidney Paget on a single sheet of notepaper. The letter was written from Undershaw, Hindhead, Haslemere, and relates to payment for the acquisition of an illustration by Paget. It is presumably related to a Sherlockian illustration but it isn't explicitly stated. While it is undated, ACD lived at Undershaw from 1897-1907.

"My dear Paget. The picture has arrived and is much admired. Our arrangement was 50 guineas, but I was a note from you as to the expense of frame, carriage & incidentals of all sorts. With humblest regards... A Conan Doyle".

The next unexpected surprise was the autographed manuscript for ACD's short story 'The Parish Magazine'. This is likely the last short story Doyle wrote - it was first published in the Strand in August 1930 (after his death). The handwriting was not dramatically different to that from the 'Angels of Darkness' MS written almost fifty years earlier, and its amazing to think this collection enable these kind of comparisons. This is also a relatively recent acquisition, a gift from the Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection.

A small diversion was made when Peggy held up an item sitting by the fireplace (below) and asked if they knew what it was? They did not. It was demonstrated to them, but still they did not know. It was explained to the girls that it was in fact a set of bellows. Not just any bellows, but bellows that had belonged to ACD, and gifted by a distant family member! They were excited to learn, but also amazed to hold something that ACD himself had held! Bellow is a word used three times in the Canon - for example: "I heard a click of steel and a bellow like an enraged bull".

Next was a truly remarkable item - part ephemera, part book. It was a copy of the Hound of the Baskervilles, with the story enclosed within the toothy grin of the hound head. This item was designed, published and created in limited edition of 20 numbered and signed copies by Jan and Jarmila Sobota.Sobota (1939-2012) was a Czech-Swiss fine bookbinder, known for creating a book from a three-dimensonal work of art. The storage box itself is a work of art.

 

I also looked through several of Arthur Conan Doyle's notebooks, including from around 1923 when ACD visiting North America. The contents are highly varied, and include for example a listed set of dates and places visited. I've shown a couple of other pages below that include ideas for stories. It would be interesting to see whether any of these translated into short stories in the last few years of Doyle's life. A fun writing competition might be to ask authors to write short stories around a single ACD idea.

These story ideas are wonderful ; simply a quick concept, that could be evolved into a story idea, including an early idea for a snuff film???, along with a joke he may have been told.

Story of "To think my sister married one of them"

Story of "I am an Irishman and the son of the Parish Priest"

Story of "Room 15"

Story of the man who was to have 2 months good time and then do suicide for a cinema.

A weary Englishman said "I have heard so often that the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the Plymouth Rock that I heartily wish the Plymouth Rock had landed on the Pilgrim Fathers.

This intrigued me, and presumably a spiritualist comment: (In pencil) "They have made just one mistake - they have mistaken a wayside station for a terminus in the journey of the soul". I cannot find a direct literary quote.

This next item is a remarkable curiosity - a complete set of sixty Sherlock works as what I can only describe as tiny little books. This set of miniature books was created by Barbara Rehab - just look at the scale and detail! There's more information on Rehab's works here: http://www.lorsonbooksandprints.com/raheb.html including a $6500 price tag for a set!

This is awkward, but I'm really as much of a Doylean as anything, so Jessie casually pulled a first edition of The Lost World off the bookshelf to show me. Wow. First time I've seen a copy and I was amazed at how LARGE it was!

What an amazing visit. Peggy invited us to pose at the chair, with one as Sherlock and the other two as Watson and Lestrade. Tessa of course was Sherlock. Many non-serious photos, and one showing just how happy we were.

So with a collection like this, I asked, is there anything that TPL need to complete the collection? Perhaps a living collection like this is never complete, but Jessie hinted that a manuscript page from Hound of the Baskervilles would be a perfect addition to the collection. So if anyone out there.... 

Thank you to Peggy and Jessie for an educational and Doylean morning! And don't forget to join the Friends of the ACD Collection: www.acdfriends.org 

And with that, a shelfie-to-die-for that I snapped wandering past the shelves on the way out.