The Company Canon

I recently got hold of a (complete) set of seven Sherlock Holmes publications titled the 'The Company Canon' published by the Franco-Midland Hardware Company. Each of these books contains a single Sherlock Holmes story, with annotations created by Philip Weller. All seven books were published in 1994 and 1995, are spiral-bound, and each has a differently-colored card cover. They are quite attractive, but what I was not prepared for based on the photos I'd seen is how small they are (4 inches by 6 inches) - see the standard-sized iPhone placed next to the seven books to give a sense of scale!

 

The seven stories that were annotated are (not in order, which I cannot determine):

• The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb (236 annotations)
• The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (123 annotations)
• The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (127 annotations)
• The Adventure of the Dancing Men (212 annotations)
• The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk (301 annotations)
• The Problem of Thor Bridge (138 annotations)
• The Adventure of the Empty House (191 annotations)

The various newsletters of the FMHC I own do not really provide any articles with a context for the creation of the series. There are brief pieces stating 'Company Canon' issues are available for sale, but I can't find any announcement of the series. The books do have a 'General Introduction' :

"The Company Canon is a collection of singular case Holmesian texts, produced in a convenient working format for scholars by The Franco-Midland Hardware Company, The International Sherlock Holmes Study Group. The basic texts used are those of The Strand Magazine, this having been the form in which the majority of the cases were first published. Variations between those texts and other important editions of the Holmesian Canon are noted, including the manuscript version, if available, and the datings assigned by the major Holmesian chronologists are listed. Space is provided for the inclusion of additional annotations.

The cover displays the crest of the Franco-Midland Hardware Company, and the Contents are listed. I'm showing Engineer's Thumb as an example. The story is not short, and the Contents show the story occupies about 33 pages,. The annotations occupy about 20 pages. Some annotations relate to differences in formatting between editions, while others provide historical context, geographical context, or meanings. Weller encouraged textual study and in these volumes he provided a 'Additional Annotations' section to allow the owner to jot down other annotations (see my post on his Geographica Baskervillia for another example of this approach). Finally, the inside of the back cover provides the dates determined by eleven Sherlockian chronologies - very handy indeed.

It's a shame (as always) that the series from Weller wasn't continued beyond these seven editions, but they provide a useful complement to the Baring-Gould and both Klinger annotations, among others. They also look great!!

As a side-note, this is not the only annotation of a Conan Doyle story published by Weller. Doyle's story 'The Winning Shot' was also published in 1995 by 'Sherlock Publications. This publication contains further detailed analysis of the story including discussion of the Dartmoor connection and maps of the area.