The Arrival of Solar Pons: Early Manuscripts and Pulp Magazine Appearances of the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street

by August Derleth, Mark Wardecker (Editor)

In the 1920’s, college student August Derleth wrote to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking if any more Sherlock Holmes adventures were going to be published. Upon receiving a negative reply, Derleth decided to provide some of his own. However, rather than relating more tales of Holmes and Dr. Watson, he ended up introducing the world to Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker, living in London during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Pons solved crimes using deduction and ratiocination, often referring to Holmes as “The Master” or “My illustrious predecessor.” Since his first appearance, Solar Pons has been a favorite with Sherlockians.

Now, the estate of August Derleth has authorized an anthology of Derleth’s original versions of many Solar Pons stories, as they appeared in early pulp magazines. You haven’t read these stories until you’ve read the original versions! With notes by Pons scholar Mark Wardecker, PSI, this is an anthology no Solar Pons fan can live without!

Join us again at 7B Praed Street, where… the game is afoot!

570 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 8, 2023

About the author

August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first book publisher of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the Cosmic Horror genre, as well as his founding of the publisher Arkham House (which did much to bring supernatural fiction into print in hardcover in the US that had only been readily available in the UK), Derleth was a leading American regional writer of his day, as well as prolific in several other genres, including historical fiction, poetry, detective fiction, science fiction, and biography

A 1938 Guggenheim Fellow, Derleth considered his most serious work to be the ambitious Sac Prairie Saga, a series of fiction, historical fiction, poetry, and non-fiction naturalist works designed to memorialize life in the Wisconsin he knew. Derleth can also be considered a pioneering naturalist and conservationist in his writing

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augus...]

Reviews

[Christopher Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

An uneven collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. Clearly, August Derleth wanted to write Sherlock Holmes stories, but could not get (or did not try to get) permission from Doyle, so he had to change things. So now Sherlock has another odd name, but every single specific detail is identical other than a few name changes. Pons has a doctor sidekick. They live in a apartment renting from a cantankerous old scots lady. They have regular contacts at the police department. Its all very clearly Sherlock Holmes with the numbers mostly ground off.

And the cases are pretty typical Sherlock stuff, but from a pulp magazine perspective. Derleth isn't quite as good at Victorian British speech and behavior as Doyle, so he ends up over- and mis-using terms like "singular." Some of the stories flat out suck but a few are actually quite good and interesting to read.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of repeated stories as well, two or three versions. Then notes, and random documents added in like a bag that someone threw everything Solar Pons into, which makes it tough to read and enjoy

[Texas Termite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of these are in other Pons books!

Shame on me for not realizing many stories are already in other Ponz books I owned! I didn't know this until I spent over $10.00 and oops, too late to do anything!
Buyer beware!! Belanger should put a disclosure on this to be fair to folks like me that buy all their books!