Every week, one of our rotating cohosts will join host Edward G. Pettit to discuss a Sherlock Holmes adventure. Once a month we’ll be joined by Special Guests to learn about a featured Sherlockian topic.
Host and Cohosts
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 – and also Pickwick Monthly. Pettit has taught many reading courses at the Rosenbach on many authors and books, including the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dracula, Frankenstein, the novels of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Philadelphia Gothic. He is a member of the Philadelphia Baker Street Irregular scion society, The Sons of the Copper Beeches, serving as the Recorder of Pedigrees, as has probably never read a Sherlock Holmes story without smoking a pipe.
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.
Special Sherlockian Guests
On October 2 Leslie S. Klinger will join us to talk about Annotated Editions of Sherlock Holmes.
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.