Jim Hawkins:
Barbara, please tell us about the Stormy Petrels.

The group is still going strong, although it's had to find a new meeting place. Living 200 miles north of Vancouver, we don't get to meetings very much, but we keep up with the group via the FLYER, which is also still going.

Barbara:
I have to be honest and say that Holmes came first: although I'd read a few of the stories at age eight, and actually played Holmes in a school radio play version of 'The Red-Headed League' at age nine, it wasn't until I was twelve, and we read 'The Speckled Band' at school, that I got hooked. When I did get interested in Holmes, though, it was total: I ate, drank, breathed, and slept Holmes and Watson!
At about the age of twelve, though, I stumbled across a couple of Conan Doyle's supernatural stories; and as I've always loved spooky tales, I looked for more of them, and so came across his other works at the same time that I was discovering Holmes. I thought it was wonderful that the same person who wrote the Holmes tales had also written all these other great stories.

Barbara:
Not really; unless you count my grade seven teacher, Mrs Young, who decided we should read 'The Speckled Band' and then do a project on it. I wrote a play called THE SECRET OF SHERLOCK OF HOLMES (this was in 1976, long before the Jeremy Brett play!), and played Holmes, which was great fun. I still have the play: I found it the other day when we were clearing some boxes out of the garage!
My parents were also instrumental in keeping me on the Sherlockian path: they were very encouraging, and never treated the whole thing like some silly phase I'd outgrow. Maybe they were thankful my hero was Holmes and not a rock star!

Barbara:
I met David in 1992, at a Northern Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society weekend in Bradford, which my girlfriend and I attended while we were in England. His HOLMES OF THE MOVIES had been one of the first Holmes reference books I'd bought, and after I moved there Christopher and I lived quite close to Huddersfield, where David lived, so we saw a lot of him and Kathryn.
When David started editing the GAZETTE he was looking for one or two people to contribute regular columns: as an editor, I know how nice it is to have regular contributions for each issue - it gives you one or two fewer things to have to worry about! I forget whose idea the 'Doctor's Page' was, but I liked the idea of a column that could take a roving look at ACD's life and his other works. And when there's a 'theme' issue, there's almost always something in Conan Doyle that I can write about: he was such a versatile man and writer.

JH:
And if you don't mind a personal question, tell us how you met Christopher.

Barbara:
When I went to England in 1992, I wrote to two or three people who I'd become friends with through correspondence, but had never met: I wanted to see if we could meet up, so I could put some faces to names. Christopher was one of the three: we went out for dinner, and then saw each other two days later at the Musgraves' weekend in Bradford, and within twelve weeks I had moved to England. I think we both knew pretty quickly that something like that was going to happen; but I think we were both a little surprised at how quickly things moved!

Barbara:
I've always loved ghost stories - they were my first love, even before Holmes! Of the three people I wanted to meet in England, two were very involved with the Ghost Story Society, and one of them lived not far from us in Chester. When she decided not to edit the group's newsletter anymore, I was asked if I wanted to take it on, and I said yes. Then, a few months later, the fellow who was running the society decided he wanted out, and rather than see the group fold, Christopher and I took over the running of it, which meant editing the journal. It was a once-a-year affair, but we've expanded it to a thrice-yearly publication of more than 80 pages an issue. 


An offshoot of all this work for the society was the formation of our supernatural publishing imprint, Ash-Tree Press. We decided to reprint some of the classic ghost story collections which people wanted to read but which had been out of print for decades. It started off as a bit of a hobby, and is now our main business; and last November we were honored to find we'd won a World Fantasy Award for our overall achievement. Not bad, considering we're only in our third full year of operation!

JH:
Christopher, your first encounter with Holmes. Was it a Book?...a Movie?... Television?

Christopher:
No. About the only nod to adventure stories was to John Buchan's 'The Thirty-Nine Steps'; for the rest, read Dickens, J. Meade Faulkner, Wilke Collins, D.H. Lawrence, and other likely candidates. Conan Doyle, of course, had a place in the school library, but it was outside of school where I encountered Professor Challenger, who followed on from Holmes in my introduction to ACD.

JH:
How did your being selected as one of the editors for the Oxford Sherlock Holmes come about?

Christopher:
Well, I had founded the ACD Society in 1989 and had struck up a good relationship with Owen Dudley Edwards. I think Owen was reasonably impressed with the work I was doing with ACD - The Journal of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society, and had respect for the work I was doing with the society generally. So, when he was approached by Oxford to be General Editor of the series, he approached me to ask whether I would like to join the editorial team, and if so, which collections would I like to edit? Unhesitatingly, I chose Memoirs and The Sign of the Four-the latter because it has always been my favourite of the long stories.

Christopher:
Basically, we were all left to do our own job, with material being discussed and channelled through Owen Dudley Edwards. I remember Richard Lancelyn Green and I had a lot of discussion about the worth of name sources, and how far we felt it was worth delving into them when, in many cases, suggestions made previously were based on little more than speculation. And a certain blueprint for the series was laid down by Owen in the early days, i.e., like deciding to include 'The Cardboard Box' in its rightful place in the Memoirs. Other than that, there was no general, organised collaboration.

Christopher:
It's hard to say whether I learnt anything about either Doyle or Holmes during the editing process. I know it was damned hard work, which involved hours of reading, checking, cross-checking, comparing texts, proof-reading, writing, and re-writing, before it was all done. Nonetheless, it was a most enjoyable experience and I was particularly gratified to receive enthusiastic comments from Professor Wallace Robson, who also worked on the series.

Christopher:
Let's put it another way: I doubt anyone reading the Introductions or Explanatory Notes for a given volume would go away not having learned something new. Owen and myself, in particular, were at pains to include as much material relating to Conan Doyle himself in both Introductions and Notes. We saw our task not so much as presenting yet another volume of Sherlock Holmes stories, but as trying to place the achievement of Conan Doyle in the overall context of English Literature. I like to think that, in the main, we succeeded in doing that. 

What we have to bear in mind about the Oxford was that it was not a collection produced solely for Sherlockians, who really number only a few thousand around the world. If you remember that Oxford produced, and sold, some 100,000 sets of the hardback edition, it puts into perspective how generally oriented that edition had to be. Of course there were complaints from Sherlockians: little things like the profusion of asterisks throughout the text (which is Oxford's way of doing things, not ours - but what workable alternatives are there?); changes made, for example like the date in 'Wisteria Lodge'; decisions that were taken over 'Cave' or 'Cove' in 'The Red Circle'. But whoever produced such an ambitious work would never have satisfied all of the Sherlockians. Again, this wasn't an annotated edition solely for consumption by Sherlockians: if it worked in introducing more people to Sherlock Holmes, and particularly the works of Conan Doyle, it served part of its purpose-and I maintain that it is the finest edition of the canon produced to date (but then, I would, wouldn't I?).

JH:
And now, some questions for both of you.
David Stuart Davies met his wife Kathryn by becoming involved in Sherlock Holmes. Was it Doyle or Holmes that brought you together? Or neither?

Rodens:
We haven't done too much travelling in the last year, since our move to Canada, though we did drive the 5,000-odd mile round trip from British Columbia to Toronto to attend the Lasting Impressions conference of the Bootmakers of Toronto in June '97. In addition, we had our first child in September, so recent months have been occupied in other ways. But yes, our business is that of full-time publishers, and we essentially manage all aspects of the business ourselves, so our time is very committed. And in addition to our work: Ash-Tree Press and Calabash Press, we run two literary societies (The ACD Society and the Ghost Story Society), so we have leisure time commitments, too, which make considerable demands on us. 

What we hope we're doing through Calabash Press, particularly with our series 'The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes', is maintaining the interest of existing Sherlockians and also developing the interest of newcomers. There are some people who believe it's all been done already, that there is nothing new that anyone could possibly say about Sherlock Holmes. Our contributors to 'The Case Files' are already proving that that is very much not the case. If we can continue to publish a quality product, which is appealing, original, and value for money, then we are more than happy. 

• The Barbara and Christopher Roden Homepage

• ACD SOCIETY

• ASH-TREE PRESS

• CALABASH PRESS

• THE GHOST STORY SOCIETY

The Rodens may be contacted also via this address:
P.O. Box 1360
Ashcroft, British Columbia, Canada V0K 1A0
Tel: (250) 453-2045
Fax: (250) 453-2075
ashtree@ash-tree.bc.ca

Home | Site Map | Interviews Index | Canada page