Ladies,
Ladies:
The Women in the Life of Sherlock Holmes
Edited by Patricia Guy, ASH and Katherine Karlson, ASH, BSI
Individual copies available
from online booksellers including
Amazon.com
Published by Aventine Press ISBN
1-59330-481-1 Cover price: $ 11.95 US
This lively
anthology of essays proposes that the women who visit 221B Baker Street are more
than storefront mannequins of their era. These ladies — whether love interests,
femmes fatales, or independent career women — faithfully mirror the
changes and challenges real women faced in the nearly half century during which
the famous detective stories were published.
The
contributors include prominent ASH members from both sides of the Atlantic
besides the two editors: Evelyn A. Herzog, Catherine Cooke, Marilyn MacGregor,
M.E. Rich, Joanne Zahorsky-Reeves, Mickey Fromkin, and Dorothy Belle Pollack.
As Patricia
Guy, ASH (Mlle Vernet), explains: “I wanted to create a book that we
could all be proud of, and sought ways to distinguish it from others that had
mined the same territory. To achieve this I decided to anchor each essay firmly
within the popular culture of the time by including music hall lyrics that
mentioned Sherlock Holmes or that mirrored essay themes, and by amplifying the
essays with odd snippets of history.”
She continues,
“The finished volume was everything we could have hoped for because my
friends and contributors had provided witty essays, great flights of imagination
and elegant prose.”
Kate Karlson,
ASH (Kitty Winter), BSI (The "Evening Standard"), adds to the tale
of how the Ladies finally came into being: “I became involved with the
Ladies’ Book, as Patricia called it, first as a humble contributor, then as one
of the stable of editors who gave it a first read and whack.”
“I learned
about print-on-demand publishing from a friend, and it fit the bill perfectly.
It sure didn’t hurt that I won the seed money for publishing on a single slot
pull at a Las Vegas casino last November.”
“That big win
paid for the publishing, and an earlier slot win in a smaller amount paid for
the services of a talented graphic artist with whom I had worked a decade ago in
corporate communications. Patricia had found an ideal illustration for the book
cover, and it would have been a shame not to have done it justice as well as the
words within.”
“There may be other scholarly Sherlockian tomes that were
funded by 'the wages of sin,' but I’m certain none of them had the extraordinary
luck and timing of our Ladies,” Kate concluded.
It’s worth noting that the
profits from the sale of this book, once publishing costs have been recovered,
will be divided between the Dr. John H. Watson Fund and the British Music Hall.
