< Back to all articles

Latest News

The Toronto Collection
28 December, 2018

The Toronto Collection

More than a century later, Sherlock Holmes lives on at the Toronto Reference Library.

Tucked away behind glass doors on the top floor of the Toronto Reference Library is a bright room with a fireplace, an unmistakable pipe on the mantel and tens of thousands of books, essays and collectibles about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous character.

The Victorianesque room was modelled after Sherlock Holmes's study at 221B Baker St. in London, England. The relics it houses date back much further, forming one of the largest collections in the world.

While the wider public may not have a clue, fans of the dogged detective know the collection well.

"We get a lot of visitors when they're visiting the city and have heard it's a place they should check out," said Jessie Amaolo, services specialist with the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection.

The Toronto Public Library first purchased about 500 books in 1969 from the estate of a man named Arthur Vincent Baillie, a private collector with a fondness for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work. It isolated 200 books about Sherlock Holmes, which formed the basis of the modern collection.

Since then, it has grown to include tens of thousands of original manuscripts, family photographs, and translations of Doyle's work.

You'll also find the famous deerstalker cap, a first edition of the Hound of the Baskervilles and even the first book where Sherlock appeared in print.

Sherlock songs

There are also dedicated fans based in Toronto with almost 200 members worldwide — part of a club called The Bootmakers that has been around as long as the Sherlock Holmes collection itself.

It meets nine times a year, and the get-togethers are structured, says president Mike Ranieri, who often does research at the reference library for the occasion.

The meetings usually revolve around one of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The members take a quiz about it, and the winner is awarded a prize.

"We actually have someone who creates a song about the story," said Ranier. "We all sit there singing the song."

There is also an offshoot group that came out of The Bootmakers, the Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, which is focused on raising funds and donations for the library's collection.

Both groups publish literary journals.

'He's logical, intelligent'

The Bootmakers is just one link in a worldwide network of fans and fan clubs that regularly publish journals and write critiques on the various original works. Sherlock's stories have been turned into mangas in Japan and various movies and series in Hollywood and in Britain. There's even Sherlock erotica out there.

Ranieri says it's no mystery why Sherlock is still so popular.

"He's logical, intelligent, very observant," he said.

"He's got integrity, something we're probably lacking today," he added with a laugh.

Peggy Perdue, who oversees Special Collections at the library, is also a fan.

"He's not just a detective, he is THE detective," she said, pointing out the "fans" are usually deeply entrenched in research. "He's a hero. You go to him to have problems solved."

 

CBC News

Other News

9 September, 2019

Event :: Conan Doyle and London

We're really looking forward to attending this important symposium at Senate House, London in November - hosted by the Institute of English Studies, University of London.

Read
12 August, 2019

The Wall Street Journal. Five Best Artic Adventures

The Wall Street Journal contacted us to provide photography and detailing to appear in their weekly Five Best column.

Read
3 July, 2019

Faeries and Fantasy

The San Marino Tribune reports that The Huntington features "the forgotten father" of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Huntington Library is one of America's leading independent humanities research libraries, located in the San Marino suburb of Los Angeles, and also has one of the existing Sherlock Holmes story manuscripts, of "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons."

Read

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more.

Accept
https://conandoyleestate.com/news/cbc-news-canada-toronto-sherlock-holmes-room-toronto-reference-library
conandoyleestate.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-39
15659
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:WHWXM7Z4GAJC5PYNNCV6ANYZDKYNBQBR
<urn:uuid:ec71ec18-a089-4d68-b9f0-a3a38b420b20>
2019-09-17T23:36:08Z
89.200.141.209
text/html
sha1:FO44VZSAKBZETCCW7AIJPJPCXU22XDDO
<urn:uuid:3ea3e6b5-8c5d-442f-9220-1c513272d467>
https://conandoyleestate.com/news/cbc-news-canada-toronto-sherlock-holmes-room-toronto-reference-library
response
<urn:uuid:3ab7868a-7220-40f7-a87d-770ba19b4570>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-68.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/