Interesting Interview: Edith Pounden

This week we are getting to know Edith Pounden!  If you've been on a Zoom meeting in the past four years, you probably recognize the face because Edith is one of the most far-reaching meeting attendees.  In fact, her love of Sherlockian meetings led her to become one of the founding members of The Legion of Zoom scion society.  Since its formation, Edith has taken on the role of coordinating the group's annual conference.

But she isn't content with Arthur Conan Doyle's 60 Sherlockian tales.  Edith is also an active member of The ACD Society and is quick to point out that her home scion, The Bimetallic Question, routinely spends time discussing the life and work of Arthur Conan Doyle.  And she know her stuff both in and out of the Canon!  Every time I've seen Edith speak up, you can count on people nodding their heads in agreement with her or watching the wheels turn as she gets folks to look at a topic from a new point of view.  So let's spend some time with her outside of the Zoom meetings in this week's Interesting Interview! 

How do you define the word “Sherlockian”?

To me, a Sherlockian is someone who has a special fascination with Sherlock Holmes. I don’t think there’s a particular requirement for this, but it’s hard for me to imagine being deeply into Sherlock Holmes without eventually wanting to dive into the original stories.

How did you become a Sherlockian?

There are so many waypoints for this. I grew up with the Rathbone/Bruce films, and my sister lent me her Doubleday Book Club 2-volume edition of the canon when I was still a kid (then made me return it, worse luck). So, I’d read many of the short stories before seeing the Granada series, and remember thinking at the time that Jeremy Brett was no Rathbone. I think reading Nicholas Meyer’s The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was what made me care about what might be happening behind the page in the original stories. I was a teen in the 80s, so I found Doyle again through the stacks of New Age books in my high school library. In one of these, there was a paragraph about Sherlockians and the Great Game, and I remember thinking that I’d arrived too late to play, because surely everything must have been figured out by that time. (Reader, it had not.)

I didn’t really pick up Sherlock Holmes again to read until my first hiking trip to New Hampshire with friends in the early 2000s. I found myself out of my depth, and rather than continue over Mt Washington as planned, I returned to our starting point (which was overbooked) and hid out in the library, where I picked out the now familiar cream-covered Oxford The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to read overnight (Steve Mason, if you are reading this, my chapter in Holmes and Me would have been called “A Study in Pinkham” for this reason, had I written it). I liked this edition so much that I soon tracked down my own copy, as well as its mates, and finally read all 60 stories, along with the insightful annotations in that series. But I only started actively playing the Game after watching the BBC series Sherlock, which I think is criminally underrated.

What is your favorite canonical story?

My usual answer to this question is that I don’t have one, but just for you, I’ll name “The Dying Detective,” because I’ve been spending a lot of time with it lately. I will say that there is not a single canon story that I would downrate; each of them offers pieces of the puzzle.

Who is a specific Sherlockian that you think others would find interesting?

I will name fellow Bimetallic Question member Kristin Franseen, who is a musicologist and has a particular interest in a much-maligned professor of mathematics. She is full of good insights on the canon and, if I recall correctly, was the original instigator of the “All of Doyle” Bimetallic Question discussion group.

What subset of Sherlockiana really interests you?

Writings about the writings. I’ve been both a bookseller and an academic, and I enjoy tracing ideas through publications. Cross-border shipping is lethal these days, so lately I’ve had to stop acquiring and focus on reading what I’ve got. I am also doing some writing of my own, which should shape itself into a book before too long.

Your interest in Arthur Conan Doyle is well-known.  What would you say to Sherlockians to convince them to spend more time with Doyle outside of the Sherlockian Canon?

I would say that Doyle’s non-Sherlockian writing strongly complements his Sherlockian writing. The characters and tropes that draw people to the canon also appear in these other stories, although the genres may shift. I would turn to these stories before pastiche to satisfy the need for more than sixty Holmes and Watson adventures.

As an officer of the Legion of Zoom, what are some highlights you've experienced from this digital age of Sherlockiana?

Sherlockian Zoom meetings during the pandemic introduced me to a much wider community of Sherlockians than I had previously been acquainted with. I was suddenly in contact with people I had known only through their writing, and I feel fortunate to call many of these people my friends now. And being involved in the founding of the Legion of Zoom and organizing its annual conference has been an absolute blast. I’m glad that several societies have maintained an online presence so that those of us who can’t travel may participate in meetings held by a variety of Sherlockian groups. Each has its own distinct character, and offers different perspectives on the canon.

What book would you recommend to other Sherlockians?

One book—you are killing me here. I have great affection for The Case Files of Sherlock Holmes, which was a series edited by Christopher and Barbara Roden in the 1990s. These books are a delight to read both for their ideas and high production quality. Sadly, only four were produced, on “The Blue Carbuncle”, “The Speckled Band”, “The Musgrave Ritual”, and “The Dying Detective”. More recently, I’ve been enjoying Trevor Hall’s books (currently reading Sherlock Holmes and His Creator).

Where do you see Sherlockiana in 5 or 10 years from now?

Five to ten years is not so long; I think things will be more or less the way they are now, with BSI-type societies meeting either in person or online (or both), and a parallel social media-based Sherlockian community, each offering different perspectives on the canon. There is already some traffic between these communities; I’m sure that will continue.