Sherlock Mondays Archive
This Rosenbach’s Biblioventure series focused on Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. We took a deep-dive into the adventures of the world’s first consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, Dr. John Watson, as they battled the criminal forces of London. We began with the first case, A Study in Scarlet, and continued with each story as they were chronologically published, finishing with “The Adventure of the Empty House.” Twenty-seven stories in 30 weeks. Host Edward G. Pettit and a rotating group of cohosts had a conversational annotation about each story, providing context and insight about Doyle and his creation. It was a paid subscriber series, but we have now released it for everyone to watch free.
The Rosenbach holds in its collection first editions of some of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books, as well as the handwritten manuscript of “The Adventure of the Empty House.” Our founder Dr. Rosenbach was deeply committed to mystery and crime literature, corresponded with the famous Sherlockian and founder of the Baker Street Irregulars, Christopher Morley, and once purchased Doyle’s personal crime library.
Whether you are a seasoned Sherlockian who has read the entire canon, or an aficionado of the various screen portrayals of Sherlock, please enjoy the archive of this one-of-a-kind Biblioventure.
Episode Archive
This series ran from September 18, 2023 until April 2024. You can watch all the episodes of Sherlock Mondays on the YouTube playlist here.
You can also listen to Sherlock Monday episodes on Spotify here.
Episode Guide
Episode 1 – A Study in Scarlet (1887) part 1
pdf A Study in Scarlet in Beeton’s Christmas Annual
Episode 2- A Study in Scarlet (1887) part 2
Episode 3- The Sign of the Four (1890) part 1 with special guest Leslie S. Klinger
pdf The Sign of the the Four in Lippincott’s Magazine
Leslie S. Klinger is considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, H. P. Lovecraft, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, and the history of crime and horror fiction. Klinger is a long-time member of the Baker Street Irregulars, and served as the Series Editor for their Manuscript Series; he is currently the Series Editor for the BSI’s Biography Series. To date, he has edited more than 75 books. His New Annotated Sherlock Holmes books were the most important new contribution to Sherlock Holmes literature since William Baring-Gould’s 1967 classic work. Klinger was the technical advisor for Warner Bros. on the film Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) and served (without credit) in that role for Warner Bros.’ earlier hit Sherlock Holmes (2009) and the technical advisor for Legendary Films for the two Enola Holmes films.
Episode 4 – The Sign of the Four (1890) part 2
Episode 5 – A Scandal in Bohemia (July 1891)
Episode 6 – The Red-Headed League (August 1891)
Episode 7 – A Case of Identity (September 1891)
Episode 8 – The Boscombe Valley Mystery (October 1891)
pdf The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Episode 9 – The Five Orange Pips (November 1891) with special guest Ray Betzner
Ray Betzner, BSI (“The Agony Column”) curates the Studies in Starrett blog at www.vincentstarrett.com. A lifelong Sherlockian, he has contributed to numerous BSI publications, and speaks about Holmes and Vincent Starrett whenever he’s asked. Ray is most proud of editing the 75th anniversary edition of Starrett’s seminal work, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. He is a Morley-Montgomery Award winner, was the 2022 BSI Trust Distinguished Speaker and is co-founder of The DoG Street Irregulars, a new scion society in Williamsburg, Va. He is a member of several scions, including The Sons of the Copper Beeches, The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) and The Scion of the Four. He is co-editor (with David Morrill) of Dancing to Death, one of the books in the BSI manuscript series, and co-editor (with Tom Horrocks) of A West Wind: American History and the Canon, to be released in January 2024.
Episode 10 – The Man with the Twisted Lip (December 1891)
pdf The Man with the Twisted Lip
Episode 11 – The Adventure of the Speckled Band (February 1892)
Episode 12 – The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb (March 1892)
Episode 13 – The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor (April 1892)
Episode 14 – The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (January 1892) with special guests Scott Monty and Burt Wolder
Scott Monty, BSI (“Corporal Henry Wood”), Editor-in-Chief, Founder and Co-Host of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, began his interest in Sherlock Holmes in his teenage years, during which he discovered his first Sherlockian society, The Men on the Tor in Connecticut – his first social network. The Sherlockian societies around the northeast were never the same after Scott descended on Boston, and The Baker Street Irregulars invested him in 2001. He established a web presence and online ordering system for The Baker Street Journal later that year. His profession led him into digital communications, and as a side project-cum-laboratory, Scott founded The Baker Street Blog in 2005. The blog existed as a standalone site until mid-2013. In 2007, with Burt Wolder, he added a podcast, and I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere was born. The two sites were combined in mid-2013 to serve as the definitive site for news and information about Sherlock Holmes on the web.
Burt Wolder, BSI (Third Pillar from the Left”), Editor and Co-Host of I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, first met Sherlock Holmes in his boyhood school library. When William S. Baring-Gould’s The Annotated Sherlock Holmes appeared, he discovered he was not alone in his love of Baker Street (“A Singular Set of People, Watson…”). A letter to Julian Wolff referred Burt to Steve Clarkson, mentor to young Sherlockians (see the 2003 BSJ Christmas Annual). Steve introduced Burt to Andy Page, Andy Peck and others and brought him to his first BSI dinner. Those early dinners introduced Burt to Al Silverstein, Jan Prager and Chris Steinbrunner, and the scion societies The Cornish Horrors, The Men on the Tor, The Speckled Band of Boston, The Sons of the Copper Beeches and more. Through the New England scion societies, Burt met his good friend and podcast partner Scott Monty. Over the years Burt wrote more than 20 short plays for The Cornish Horrors, all Holmesian comedies. In 2004 Burt’s admiration of Christopher Morley’s life and writings led him to reestablish the Three Hours for Lunch Club, which now meets annually at The Players in memory of Frederick Dorr Steele, and irregularly elsewhere.
Episode 15 – The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet (May 1892)
Episode 16 – The Adventure of the Copper Beeches (June 1892)
Episode 17 – The Adventure of Silver Blaze (December 1892)
Episode 18 – The Adventure of the Cardboard Box (January 1893)
Episode 19 – The Adventure of the Yellow Face (February 1893)
Episode 20 – The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk (March 1893)
Episode 21 – The Adventure of the Gloria Scott (April 1893)
Episode 22 – The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual (May 1893)
Episode 23 – The Adventure of the Reigate Squire (June 1893)
Episode 24 – The Adventure of the Crooked Man (July 1893)
Episode 25 – The Adventure of the Resident Patient (August 1893)
Episode 26 – The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (September 1893)
Episode 27 – The Adventure of the Naval Treaty (October–November 1893)
Episode 28 – The Final Problem (December 1893)
Episode 29 – The Adventure of the Empty House (October 1903)
pdf of The Empty House The Strand Magazine
pdf of The Empty House Colliers Magazine
Episode 30 – Wrap-up show
Special episodes on Detectives of the Great Hiatus
Episode 31 – The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by C.L. Pirkis, “The Black Bag Left on a Door-Step,” Ludgate Monthly
Feb 1893pdf of The Black Bag
Ep. 32 – Martin Hewitt, Investigator by Arthur Morrison, “The Lenten Croft Robberies,” The Strand Magazine March 1894
pdf of The Lenten Croft Robberies
pdf of “Crimes and Criminals” series published in The Strand Magazine, Feb-Jun 1894.
Meet the Host
Edward G. Pettit is the Sunstein Senior Manager of Public Programs at the Rosenbach and has been presenter for the weekly Biblioventures series: Sundays with Dracula, Sundays with Frankenstein, Sundays with Jane Eyre, and Austen Mondays: Pride and Prejudice. Pettit has taught many reading courses at the Rosenbach, including Nicholas Nickleby, Bleak House, and Dickens’ Christmas Books. He is a member of the Dickens Fellowship, the Philadelphia Pickwick Club, and in 2012, was the Charles Dickens Ambassador for the Free Library of Philadelphia’s year-long bicentenary celebration of Dickens’ birth. He is a member of the Philadelphia Baker Street Irregular scion society, The Sons of the Copper Beeches, serving as the Recorder of Pedigrees, and has probably never read a Sherlock Holmes story without smoking a pipe while reading.
Meet the Cohosts
Olivia Rutigliano is an Editor at Lit Hub and its vertical CrimeReads. She was a Contributing Editor at the film magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room, and has written essays for Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham’s Quarterly, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Baffler, Politics/Letters, The Toast, Truly Adventurous, and elsewhere. She, a specialist in the history of mass entertainment from the late 19th through the 20th centuries, has a PhD from the departments of English/Comparative Literature and Theatre at Columbia University, where she was the Marion E. Ponsford fellow. She is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars.
Dr. Anastasia Klimchynskaya is a scholar of nineteenth-century literature with a deep interest in the intersections between science, technology, literature, and the cultural imagination. Having called Philadelphia home while receiving her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, she has previously appeared on the Rosenbach’s Sundays with Frankenstein, and written widely on Sherlock Holmes, science fiction, the history of science, and the Gothic in numerous scholarly and Sherlockian publications. She is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the world’s oldest and most renowned Sherlock Holmes society, and helps organize Philcon, Philadelphia’s science fiction convention.
Curtis Armstrong is an actor who began his life in the organized Sherlockian world when he joined The Trifling Monographs, a Scion society for students founded by the late Susan Rice in the late sixties. His first paper was published in the Baker Street Journal shortly before his induction in the Baker Street Irregulars in 2006. He has delivered numerous papers since at the BSI annual January Birthday Weekends in New York City, for the 221B Con in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as literary symposiums in Chicago and the Hudson Valley, NY. Recently, he was featured in both seasons of the Audible dramatic series, Moriarty, written by Charles Kindinger.
Monica Schmidt, ASH, BSI, is the president of The Younger Stamfords of Iowa City, a BSI Scion Society. She is a member of multiple Sherlockian societies including The Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota, The Sons of the Copper Beeches, The Speckled Band of Boston, and The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic) of Chicago. Since 2013, Monica has been a staple in the Sherlockian conference/lecture circuit, typically speaking on the subject of Sherlock Holmes and mental health, having written the definitive essay on Holmes’s cocaine use in the Canon. She received the investiture of “Julia Stoner” from The Baker Street Irregulars in 2019 and “The Church of St. Monica” from The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes in 2015. When not engaging in Sherlockian events or playing cricket, Monica is a licensed mental health counselor in private practice, a member of the film critic staff for Cedar Rapids radio station KCCK, and engages in never-ending landscaping projects in her backyard with her supportive spouse, Bill.
Mary Alcaro is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Rutgers University, where she is completing a dissertation on the Black Death’s traumatic effect on fourteenth century literature. An avid Sherlockian, Mary has been invested in the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI) and Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes (ASH), and currently co-leads The Sons of the Copper Beeches, Philadelphia’s Sherlockian scion society. She has contributed essays to several books on various Sherlockian topics. Mary is also a bartender, co-creator of the Sherlock Mondays’ themed cocktails.
