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, and has probably never read a Sherlock Holmes story without smoking a pipe while reading.
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.
Hound of the Baskervilles Special Series Cohosts
Paul M. Chapman has written widely on Victorian and Edwardian genre literature, with a particular focus on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, J. S. Le Fanu and M. R. James. He was a staff writer on Sherlock magazine for ten years, and edited The Ritual for the Northern Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society. He is also the author of Birth of a Legend: Count Dracula, Bram Stoker and Whitby, and has contributed articles and reviews to ACD: The Journal of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society, The Musgrave Papers, All Hallows, Ghosts & Scholars and Wormwood.
Mark Jones (BSI, MBt, ASH) has been fascinated by the works of Arthur Conan Doyle since he read the canon one wet summer holiday as a twelve-year-old, before diving into The Lost World. He studied and taught the history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and continues to work in higher education as a consultant. He has written several books on television, film and literature including Dark Matters (co-written with Lance Parkin), an introduction to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels for young teenagers. He has contributed articles to The Baker Street Journal, Canadian Holmes, The Serpentine Muse and numerous blogs.
Both Paul and Mark host the Doings of Doyle podcast and are members of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London and The Scandalous Bohemians – a Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle society based in the north of England, which holds regular meetings in Leeds and York. In 2018, together with Paul’s partner, Teresa Dudley (Secretary of The Scandalous Bohemians), they organised the ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ M. R. James conference in York.
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.
Steven Doyle wears many hats in the Sherlockian world, including being one half of Sherlockian publishing company Wessex Press/Gasogene Books, and publisher of The Baker Street Journal for the last ten years. He also hosts the popular BSI video podcast The Fortnightly Dispatch. He has authored or edited seven books on Sherlock Holmes, including Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, and the just-released Clutches of a Fiend, the latest in the Baker Street Irregulars Manuscript Series. Steve is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars and is proud to lead The Illustrious Clients of Indianapolis. He is also a founding member of The 140 Varieties of Tobacco Ash, as well as the international movement known as S.P.O.D.E.
Maximilian Magee, PSI (“Agent Tobias Athelney”) is the social chair of the Notorious Canary-Trainers of Madison, Wisconsin, and leads a group known as Comrades of The Order and its spin-off SPODE scion Captain Basil’s Mignonettes. In 2021, he attended his first BSI weekend and has never looked back. He’s a [hyper] active member of the Hounds of the Internet, frequent visitor- and member of- the Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota, he’s also the “Gopher” Yeoman Purser of the Torists International S.S. of Chicago. His background, education, and work experience in tech has led to all sorts of weird and interesting Sherlockian projects, like an e-re-serialization of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and using A.I. and computer science to analyze, dissect, and discuss the Canon. Recent projects include brute-force searching the entire canonical text for longest palindromes (it’s 12-characters long and occurs in COPP)*, producing story summaries in alphabetical word-order, and frequency analysis of word-usage and punctuation over time. Max holds a B.S. in Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics from the University of Wisconsin, has worked as a Flight Design Engineer and Flight Controller at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and worked as the CTO of a cloud A.I. startup, is currently a Manager of Software Development at a local Madison software company, and he’s a third-degree black belt and teacher of Kuk Sool Won and former world-champion in bong (the Korean martial art long-staff).
Special Sherlockian Guests
On December 18 Scott Monty and Burt Wolder will join us to talk about I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere and podcasting Sherlock. Watch here
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.
On November 13 Ray Betzner will join us to talk about the Baker Street Irregulars organization. Watch here
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.
On October 2 Leslie S. Klinger will join us to talk about Annotated Editions of Sherlock Holmes. Watch here
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.