The Call of the Hunt Duration: November 1985 to August 1992, seventy-eight
issues, nearly seven years If one ever wanted to go back and see what the late 1980s were like in the Sherlockian world, one could do no better than to find a stash of The Call of the Hunt. It was printed on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper on a dot-matrix printer (the kind where you could see the little dots that formed the type -- remember those?) and stapled in the upper left hand corner. Each issue consisted of a series of numbered paragraphs written by John Stephenson, one of the most energetic Sherlockian collectors of those days, relating every little news item that came in from his correspondence, crossed his path at the bookstores, or that he heard at Sherlockian functions. One of the best things about The Call of the Hunt was that John Stephenson didn't just let the journal be a list of new items -- he opened and closed with style, opening up his "little bookship at the corner of Church Street" at the beginning of each issue and closing it up at the end. And in between, John basically did the snail mail version of a weblog. He wrote briefly of visits to other Sherlockians, things that happened at the BSI dinner, and all sorts of things -- just like many another Sherlockian publication of those days, but the big difference was the sheer amount of material that John produced on a monthly basis. He had a little help filling the backsides of his pages, from "Second Edition" Ron Lies, artist Stephanie Hawks, and a number of others, but John Stephenson was still the prime content provider of every issue. And seven years of doing that on a monthly basis was a remarkable achievement. Getting The Call of the Hunt every month was just what every periodical should strive for, in my book: being like a welcome friend showing up for a visit. It's one publication that I definitely missed when it was done. -- BAK |
