New Sherlock Holmes Serial!

Just thought I'd shove this up. It's one of the Strand Magazines I bought for more-than-was-sensible last year, one of the 'loose' copies that hasn't been bound up into volumes like the majority. This is such a corker I leave lying on top of one of the piles to help convince me it was money well spent. It's the September, 1914, edition featuring the opening instalments of the last of the long Holmes stories, The Valley of Fear. Lovely to see Holmes, in colour, on the front.

Alas I can't reproduce the full-page colour illustration from which it's taken without squashing the mag on the scanner, but it's one of the iconic Holmes images and helps make this particular copy one of the most sought-after Strands. It's not in perfect nick - it's missing its back cover and is a bit scuffed round the edges, but it's not bad. Individual issues from this period don't survive well.

An eBay bargain

But why wait till Thursday? It's just occurred to me that one major enthusiasm which I intend to splurge all over this blog and which I didn't mention in the post above is the one I have for Victorian and Edwardian magazines. I have a growing collection which includes 80-odd volumes of The Strand which I bought recently for a big chunk of dosh I couldn't really afford and a number of Pearson's, Wide Worlds and a few Pall Malls.

I was reminded of this because I've just acquired one off eBay for a very reasonable £15 (plus £4.50 p&p). It's Pearson's Magazine Volume 6 and I also just bought vol 13 off Amazon of all places for £17. This means I now have vols 1-13 complete, plus 15 and some 20-somethings. So I'm filling in gaps.

What's fun is that you don't know what you're going to get in them till you've got 'em. Vol 13, for example, turned out to have the first publication of one of Kipling's most famous short stories 'How The Leopard Changed Its Spots' and a few parts of a daft series involving a well brought-up young palmist/clairvoyant lady who ends up solving crimes with her miraculous powers. I love this sort of stuff and intend to start repupblishing some of it if I can get the money together.

I'll let you know what goodies I find in Vol VI when I get back from London (no doubt the postman will dump it in the space above the leccy meter like he does with all my parcels whether I'm in or out). I'm particularly pleased with this one since it's in the original binding and appears to be in especially nice condition. I've attached the eBayer's photo of it. Pearson's has the most handsome off all the Victorian magazine bindings, a beautiful art nouveau affair. Unfortunately, the seller's flash has bleached the colours but you get the idea.