|
Lisez-vous des Français? It was a busy week in the Lone Star State. After spending ten days in California, it was good to be home. I got to spend time with Emile Kate Hamill, second granddaughter. She is very tiny but has already lost that new-born baby wrinkliness. She was three weeks premature so she spends the majority of her time sleeping. I figure she will be like a puppy or a kitten and open her eyes when she is good and ready. Early in the week, I was navigating through the Société Sherlock Holmes de France website when I made a startling discovery. They have a very extensive bibliography of French translations of the Canon. I spent the rest of the week cross-checking their entries against my own database. I was able to send them several scans of books that they were missing. The site is marvelously designed. They ignore the De Waal numbers completely, instead listing the books in reverse chronological order. The first entry is from January 2007 and the last one is for 1905. I know in De Waal there are translations into French as early as 1898. After more than 20 hours of scouring the two databases, I discover the French like the story "The Man with the Twisted Lip". This story shows up in more collections that any other story. It was followed closely by "The Adventure of the Engineer's Thumb". The work the French has done is just short of incredible. The listings for each book has links to the book's publisher and if available, to other books in the series. There are options to do free-text searches for a specific title. All of the publications from 1950 to the present has associated images of the book's cover. If the image is clicked-on, a larger image is brought up. I can see new directions for The Galactic Sherlock Holmes if only I had the time. There are 420 entries but I found several translations not listed. The French magazine Le Petite Journal was missing from the list. I know that The Hound of the Baskervilles was serialized in the magazine between October 16, 1921 though February 19, 1922. The numbers run from 1,609 to 1,626. However, this is a minor issue compared with all of the information provided. If the other great European societies and the equally great Japanese societies could produce this in depth bibliography, it would make a project like mine much easier. I offer a tip of my deerstalker to the Société Sherlock Holmes de France and their wonder website. Here is a place to go to lose a few hour and even realize it. Happy Collecting!!
|
