The Sherlockian Millennium

A Sampler of the Past 1000 Years of Holmes

The 1000s

An oak tree grows in Western Sussex, on land later owned by the Musgrave family. The Red King grants Birlstone to Hugo de Capus.

The 1100s

Oxford University founded.

The 1200s

Cambridge University founded.

The 1300s

A delicate little saucer of a most beautiful deep-blue colour is made at a pottery in China, later to find its way into the hands of “Dr. Hill Barton.”

The 1400s

A monk keeps the accounts of his abbey, only to have them later erased and written over, then one day uncovered by Sherlock Holmes. The Cubitts come to Riding Thorpe in the County of Norfolk.

The 1500s

Reginald Musgrave’s branch separates from the northern Musgraves and establishes itself in western Sussex.

The 1600s

Musgrave Ritual is written. A farmer named Cheeseman builds a house in Sussex. Hugo Baskerville kidnaps a yeoman’s daughter and causes Hound of Hell to be loosed.

The 1700s

Row of houses built on Godolphin Street between the river and the Abbey, almost in the shadow of the great Tower of the Houses of Parliament. Consulting criminal mastermind Jonathan Wild works for 15% commission. Four successive heirs to the Roylott estate are of a dissolute and wasteful disposition. Hugo Baskerville the latter writes up the legend of the Hound for his children. Rear-Admiral Baskerville serves in the West Indies. Sir William and Sir Denis Falder live and die.

The 1800s

The pinnacle of the art of detection is reached. And a whole lot of other things happen involving squires, convicts, Americans, nobility, dogs, red-headed men, Napoleon, opera singers, Mormons, step-daughters . . .

The 1900s

1900 . . . Shinwell Johnson becomes a valuable assistant to Sherlock Holmes in London, whilst William Gillette attains success impersonating Holmes in America.

1901 . . . The Hound of the Baskervilles published.

1902 . . . One of the earliest known pieces of Sherlockian scholarship appears in the January 23 Cambridge Review, in which Frank Sidgwick questions Watson’s dates in Hound.

1903 . . . Sherlock Holmes retires from his London practice, just as Watson lets the world know he is still alive in “The Adventure of the Empty House.”

1904 . . . Parker Brothers comes out with “Sherlock Holmes” card game.

1905 . . . Billy the page portrayed on the stage by young Charlie Chaplin.

1906 . . . Ferdinand Bonn’s play “Sherlock Holmes” opens in Berlin.

1907 . . . Sherlock Holmes solves the matter of “The Lion’s Mane” during his Sussex retirement.

1908 . . . Viggo Larsen portrays Holmes in the silent film Sherlock Holmes I Livsfar.

1909 . . . Paul Sarauw’s theatrical adaptation of A Study in Scarlet opens in Copenhagen..

1910 . . . Watson’s literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, sees his play based on “The Speckled Band” produced in London.

1911 . . . Father Ronald Knox reads his paper, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes,” at Oxford.

1912 . . . Holmes leaves England and goes underground in America under the name “Altamont.”

1913 . . . Harry Benham plays Holmes in silent movie adaptation of The Sign of the Four.

1914 . . . Sherlock Holmes defeats German master spy Von Bork.

1915 . . . La Tragedia de Baskerville opens in Bilbao theater.

1916 . . . Sherlock Holmes silent movie with William Gillette released.

1917 . . . Watson’s record of the Holmes/Von Bork affair is published.

1918 . . . Karl Heinz Wolff stars as Holmes in several German silents.

1919 . . . A.L. Burt Company publishes their edition of His Last Bow.

1920 . . . Movie producer Maurice Evey first casts Eille Norwood as Sherlock Holmes.

1921 . . . Conan Doyle is still trying his hand at writing Holmes plays. “The Crown Diamond” opens in London.

1922 . . . John Barrymore stars in “Sherlock Holmes” movie.

1923 . . . Sherlock Holmes appears on cigarette cards.

1924 . . . Harry B. Smith gets Sherlock Holmes to tackle “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” and prints results in Munsey magazine.

1925 . . . “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs” published in The Strand Magazine.

1926 . . . “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane” published in Liberty Magazine.

1927 . . . The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is published.

1928 . . . Manchester’s Empire News reports that Watson’s literary agent thinks clairvoyants could help detectives. Holmes unavailable for comment.

1929 . . . S. C. Roberts has “A Note on the Watson Problem” published at Cambridge. The first film Holmes ever heard speaking, Clive Brook appears in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Edith Meiser starts writing Holmes radio scripts.

1930 . . . Death of Watson’s literary agent, and the first publication of the “complete” Holmes Canon, occurs.

1931 . . . H.W. Bell publishes Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: The Chronology of Their Adventures.

1932 . . . First Hound of the Baskervilles movie with sound released (Robert Rendel as Holmes).

1933 . . . Vincent Starrett’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes sees print.

1934 . . . First meeting of first Sherlock Holmes society, the Baker Street Irregulars.

1935 . . . First meeting of the second Sherlock Holmes society, The Sherlock Holmes Society of London.

1936 . . . Nazis make their own version of Der Hund von Baskerville with Bruno Guttner as Holmes — Hitler has his own copy.

1937 . . . Arthur Wontner finishes his last Holmes movie, The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes. Louis Hector appears as first television Sherlock in experimental NBC production of “The Three Garridebs.”

1938 . . . Orson Welles brings his adaptation of William Gillette’s play to the radio.

1939 . . . Basil Rathbone, the most successful motion picture impersonator of Holmes, appears in The Hound of the Baskervilles and begins radio shows.

1940 . . . 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes, edited by Vincent Starrett, is published.

1941 . . . Rex Stout’s infamous “Watson was a Woman” read at the BSI dinner.

1942 . . . Rathbone’s movie Sherlock battles Nazis in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror.

1943 . . . Petri Wine starts sponsoring Sherlock Holmes radio show. The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) of Chicago founded.

1944 . . . Christopher Morley’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Textbook of Friendship (the first annotated version of the Canon), Ellery Queen’s The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes (the first collection of pastiches and parodies), and Edgar Smith’s Profile by Gaslight: An Irregular Reader About the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes are all published.

1945 . . . The Greek Interpreters of East Lansing, Michigan, is founded.

1946 . . . Edgar Smith launches The Baker Street Journal.

1947 . . . John Stanley takes over from Tom Conway who took over from Basil Rathbone as radio’s Holmes.

1948 . . . A tale that seemed to have escaped storage in Watson’s tin dispatch box, “The Man Who Was Wanted,” is found among the papers of Watson’s literary agent. Later it proved to be a pastiche written by one Arthur Whitaker.

1949 . . . Alan Napier plays Holmes in television adaptation of “Speckled Band.”

1950 . . . Ben Wright takes over as radio’s Holmes.

1951 . . . 221B Baker Street sitting room reconstructed at the Festival of Britain.

1952 . . . First issue of The Sherlock Holmes Journal.

1953 . . . Plaque erected at the Criterion to commemorate first meeting of young Stamford and Dr. Watson.

1954 . . . The literary agent’s son collaborates with mystery writer John Dickson Carr to produce a volume of fictitious Holmes stories, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes.

1955 . . . William S. Baring-Gould’s The Chronological Holmes and H.W. Bell’s Baker Street Studies published.

1956 . . . NIL?

1957 . . . Baker Street Irregulars meeting appears on network television, and it is revealed that not only did Sherlock Holmes live in New York, but the events of “Red-Headed League” actually occurred there.

1958 . . . Eve Titus reveals to the world that a mouse living at 221B, Basil of Baker Street, managed to pick up the methods of the great detective.

1959 . . . Peter Cushing plays Holmes in Hammer Films production of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Mystery writer Robert L. Fish begins the Schlock Holmes saga.

1960 . . . Edgar Smith proudly announces that The Baker Street Journal is published without the permission of the Doyle estate.

1961 . . . Carleton Hobbs plays Sherlock on British radio.

1962 . . . Christopher Lee puts on false nose to play Holmes in the German film Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace.

1963 . . . The literary agent’s son attempts to make still more money off Holmes with a movie entitled Fog (later called A Study in Terror).

1964 . . . Musical Baker Street with Fritz Weaver opens.

1965 . . . BBC television does series of 12 Holmes stories starring Douglas Wilmer as Holmes.

1966 . . . Caedmon Records releases recording of Basil Rathbone reading “The Red-Headed League.”

1967 . . . William S. Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes is published.

1968 . . . The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes formed in reaction to men-only policy of Baker Street Irregulars.

1969 . . . Trevor Hall’s Sherlock Holmes: Ten Literary Studies out.

1970 . . . Billy Wilder releases The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, cut down from its original three hour length to two hours and five minutes.

1971 . . . Arthur Lewis fictionalizes Philadelphia’s Sons of the Copper Beeches in Copper Beeches.

1972 . . . The Bootmakers of Toronto are founded. Philip José Farmer publishes Tarzan Alive, the definitive biography of Lord Greystoke, with an extended genealogy that includes Sherlock Holmes.

1973 . . . Canadian Holmes begins publication. Ronald Burt DeWaal finishes The World Bibliography of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, just in time for . . .

1974 . . . Dr. Watson again hits the bestseller lists as Nicholas Meyer releases Watson’s chronicle of Holmes kicking his cocaine addiction with the help of Sigmund Freud, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.

1975 . . . Michael Harrison retrieves Holmes’s own memoirs from British Museum and publishes them under the title I, Sherlock Holmes. Baker Street Miscellanea begins publication.

1976 . . . Richard L. Boyer unearths Watson’s The Giant Rat of Sumatra, and Austin Michelson and Nicholas Utechin come out with Watson’s The Giant Rat of Sumatra, and Austin Michelson and Nicholas Utechin come out with Watson’s The Earthquake Machine.

1977 . . . Jack Tracy’s Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana is published. The first John Bennett Shaw workshop takes place.

1978 . . . Loren Estleman discovers tin dispatch box containing a chronicle of Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, Fred Saberhagen does the same with The Holmes-Dracula File, and Michael Dibdin exposes the most evil Watsonian chronicle ever published, The Last Sherlock Holmes Story.

1979 . . . Michael Hardwick edits his first batch of tin dispatch box papers, Prisoner of the Devil. Peter Blau starts Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press.

1980 . . . Holmes belatedly undertakes to solve the Kennedy assassination as edited by Edward Aubrey under the title, Sherlock Holmes in Dallas.

1981 . . . Frank Langella stars as Sherlock in HBO version of the Gillette play.

1982 . . . First Sherlock Holmes computer programming books, Elementary Basic and Elementary Pascal by Henry Ledgard and Andrew Singh.

1983 . . . David Hammer comes out with The Game is Afoot, the first of his series of Sherlockian travel guides.

1984 . . . Simon Goodenough releases the first of his Sherlock Holmes Murder Dossiers, containing reproductions of actual evidence from The Hound of the Baskervilles.

1985 . . . Steven Spielberg releases Young Sherlock Holmes, the movie that claims Holmes and Watson met as boys.

1986 . . . Edward Hardwicke takes over as Watson on British television.

1987 . . . William D. Goodrich’s Canonical concordance Good Old Index is published.

1988 . . . The motion picture Without a Clue reveals Dr. Watson as the true brains behind the Holmes/Watson partnership.

1989 . . . Rubber dog toy edition of The Hound of the Baskervilles by “A. Collie Dog” is “published.”

1990 . . . Carole Nelson Douglas begins publishing the papers of Penelope Huxleigh, Irene Adler’s “Watson,” with Good Night, Mr. Holmes. The Canon on CD-ROM for computers comes out.

1991 . . . STUD Sherlockian Society formed.

1992 . . . Women are admitted to the Baker Street Irregulars for the first time. The Hounds of the Internet take up residence in the world of e-communication.

1993 . . . The Oxford Sherlock Holmes is published.

1994 . . . Laurie King releases the first manuscript found in a trunk which came to her “some years ago,” detailing the detective career of Holmes’s student, and later wife, Mary Russell.

1995 . . . Dedication of the Shaw library at the U. of Minnesota.

1996 . . . Larry Millet produces his first evidence that Holmes and Watson detected in Minnesota, Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon. Calabash Press produces the first of their “Case Files” series, The Musgrave Ritual.

1997 . . . The Holmes & Watson Report begins publication.

1998 . . . First volume of Les Klinger’s new annotated Canon comes out.

1999 . . . Statue of Sherlock Holmes erected in Baker Street. Steve Clarkson’s The Canonical Compendium sees print.

And that makes one thousand . . . .