20 years of The Bunburyist.

The inquiring Elizabeth Foxwell. 

I missed the 20th anniversary of The Bunburyist (which occurred on November 5). I've been very busy as an editor at McFarland and Co., which—although I relish the opportunity to work on many fascinating projects dealing with subjects like women's history and mystery fiction—leaves me less time to devote to social media. I am very grateful for the many visitors who are interested in mystery history and continue to drop by. They might note that lately I've been including posts about mystery-related music (particularly film music), as I tend to find that composers often do not receive much attention for their important work.

The following are the top 10 posts on The Bunburyist based on views, and I should note that my page with links to mystery course syllabi is pretty popular as well. Do you have other favorites?
 

 The Top 10 Posts on The Bunburyist, 2005–25:

10. "Iniquity is catching":  Frank R. Stockton's The Stories of the Three Burglars (1889)

 9. "Security Risk" [TV episode, narrated by Jack Webb, 1963] 

 8. "Iconic Detectives" exhibition at Ohio State

 7. New release, Gerald Fried's crime drama music

 6. Hidden Fear (film, 1957)

 5. McFarland's true crime sale

 4. Upcoming tribute to Rod Serling

 3. "Committed" (TV episode with Alan Ladd, 1954)

 2. "The Grave Grass Quivers," by MacKinlay Kantor (1931)

 1. Dozen Best Detective Stories Ever Written

Grolier Club exhibition: "Imaginary Books."

Sheridan Le Fanu.

On view until February 15, 2025, and online is the exhibition "Imaginary Books: Lost, Unfinished, and Fictive Works Found Only in Other Books" at the Grolier Club in New York City. These are nonexistent works that appear in other works. Mysteries include "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" by John H. Watson and Death 'Twixt Wind and Water by Harriet Vane. Vane's study of Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu and Lord Peter Wimsey's scholarly works also are featured. I was most tickled to see The History of Ancient Egypt by famed irascible Egyptologist Radcliffe Emerson (first mentioned in Elizabeth Peters' The Deeds of the Disturber).

A blue plaque for E. C. R. Lorac.

On August 19, a new blue plaque was unveiled at Newbanks Cottage, the former residence of British mystery writer E. C. R. Lorac (aka Edith Caroline Rivett, 1894–1958), in Aughton, UK (about 10 miles north of Liverpool). Mystery author Martin Edwards provides some details on the event on his blog; see also his blog post on an earlier exhibition about Lorac's work. 

Illustration from E. C. R. Lorac, "Remember to
Ring Twice," MacKill's Mystery Magazine,
Sept. 1952

Exhibition: "The Victorian World in Flux."

On display until December 22nd is the exhibition "Detecting an Anxious Gaze: The Victorian World in Flux" in McLennan Library's Rare Books and Special Collections at McGill University. The exhibition is curated by graduate students in the course Enter the Detective. Mystery items include Revelations of a Lady Detective (1884) by William Stephens Hayward.

More on the exhibition here.

Exhibition: "The Victorian Book."

The Police News from the
Lilly Library exhibition

Running through December 15, 2023, at Indiana University Bloomington's Lilly Library is "The Victorian Book: From the Gutter to the Stars," which features an array of books (including mystery) with formats and designs new to the era.

"The Girl Sleuth" exhibition at Syracuse U.

Ending soon at Syracuse University's Bird Library is the exhibition "The Girl Sleuth," with books including such sleuths as Nancy Drew and Peggy Parker. See further details in Syracuse's The Daily Orange.

Upcoming Grolier Club exhibition: "Key Books in Detective Fiction."

Feminist Press ed.
of The G-String Murders

New York's Grolier Club will open the exhibition "Whodunit? Key Books in Detective Fiction" in November 2023, which will feature significant and unusual mystery works from the collection of Grolier Club member Jeffrey Johnson. Items will include The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens,  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, and The G-String Murders by Gypsy Rose Lee (often thought to be ghosted by Craig Rice).

Beijing hosts Sherlock Holmes exhibition.

Sherlock Holmes by
Sidney Paget

China Daily brings word that the National Museum of Classic Books in Beijing is hosting an exhibition on Sherlock Holmes until November 2, including crime scenes from the Holmes canon and a late-19th-century Chinese newspaper that printed Holmes tales translated into Chinese.

Online TCU exhibition on dime novels.

Texas Christian University's Mary Couts Burnett Library has the online exhibition "A Riotous Imagination; or, Dime Novels in America," which looks at the inexpensive and often lurid tales of adventure, mystery, horror, and romance that emerged in the nineteenth century. Sections of the exhibition include "Cowboys and Detectives," "Investigating Crime," and "Rise of the Pulps."

The agonies of the agony column.

The Ciphers of The Times project at McGill University (headed by Nathalie Cooke) explores the Victorian agony column in the Times of London that often involved messages from criminals and detectives, including ways that messages in this column were encoded. The project includes an online interactive game where a person can play detective by following clues in a sample column. There also are discussion and data regarding "newspaper novels" (those that involve newspapers in their plots) such as The Female Detective (1864) by Andrew Forrester (aka James Redding Ware) and Lady Audley's Secret (1862) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. An additional resource is the accompanying exhibition "News and Novel Sensations."

Sherlock Holmes items from Guymon collection at California Antiquarian Book Fair.

Ned Guymon with his
first wife, Ernestine, in 1923.

There will be an exhibition featuring Sherlock Holmes materials from Occidental College's Ned Guymon Collection of Mystery and Detective Fiction during the 55th California International Antiquarian Book Fair on February 10–12, 2023, in Pasadena. The collection is composed of some 16,000 items; one item is an 1887 copy of A Study in Scarlet (also includes Guymon's bookplate).

 There also is a Guymon collection at Bowling Green State University.

"Kentish Tales" exhibition.

J.  S. Fletcher

On view until the end of the month at the Augustine House library at Canterbury Christ Church University (UK) is the exhibition "Kentish Tales: Stories of Love, Smuggling, and Murder" that focuses on authors who lived in or wrote about Kent. A mystery-related title in the exhibition is The Passenger to Folkestone (1927) by J. S. Fletcher, in which a murder appears to result from robbery but eventually reveals other facets (the online info on the exhibition includes an audio excerpt from the book). Also included is the comedy The Green Alleys by Eden Phillpotts, who was Agatha Christie's mentor. The exhibition is curated by the digital humanities project Kent Maps Online.

Upcoming Tasmania mystery exhibition.

The Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival is planning the exhibition "Tasmania: A Century of Mystery" in honor of the centenary of Agatha Christie's visit to Tasmania. The exhibition, which will be on view from October 2–30, 2022, will focus on mysteries written by Tasmanians or set in Tasmania. The webpage also reveals that there will be a new branch of Sisters in Crime in Tasmania.

Sherlock Holmes exhibition redux.

Indiana University Bloomington's Lilly Library is the latest host of the "Sherlock Holmes in 221 Objects" exhibition (originally hosted by the Grolier Club and featuring memorabilia, manuscripts, books, and other items related to the Great Detective). The exhibition will be on view until December 16, 2022.

Oslo exhibition on Jo Nesbø's series.

The National Library of Norway is offering the exhibition "Labyrinth: Tracing Harry Hole," which explores Jo Nesbø's popular series through the device of a labyrinth. Exhibit items include a reader's report on the first book in the series and an unpublished manuscript. The exhibition is on view until November 5, 2022.

Videos related to the exhibition

Gay pulp fiction exhibition, Emory University.

On view until October 7, 2022, at Emory University's Rose Library is the exhibition "Forbidden Loves and Secret Lusts: Selections from the Golden Age of Queer Pulp Fiction, which draws from the library's hundreds of such novels that were published from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Also, the library has added to its collection of Victorian yellowbacks.

Online exhibition, Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks.

The Phantom of the Opera by
Gaston Leroux, part of the
UNC Libraries exhibition

The UNC Libraries online exhibition "Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks" draws on the paperback collection of UNC Chapel Hill to assist instructors who wish to use such works in their classroom. Some sample lesson plans are provided. Mystery books include assorted works by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; The Blue Geranium by Dolan Birkley (aka Dolores Hitchens); The Couch by Robert Bloch; Honeymoon in Hell by Fredric Brown; Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis; A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard; I Married a Dead Man and other works by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich); and Sorry, Wrong Number by Allan Ullman and Lucille Fletcher (as the cover notes: "She Dialed .. D-E-A-T-H").

"Books, Bohemians and Baker Street" exhibition.

The online exhibition "Books, Bohemians and Baker Street: A Study in Sherlock in Special Collections" at University of Delaware Library features items in the library collections related to the Arthur Conan Doyle story "A Scandal in Bohemia," some unusual items pertaining to Sherlock Holmes (such as Julian Symons's speculation, "Did Sherlock Holmes Meet Hercule...?"), and letters from Conan Doyle.

Three mystery exhibitions, Toronto Public Library.

The following exhibitions just opened at the Toronto Public Library:

Poster for Sherlock Holmes
with William Gillette, 1901.
Arthur Conan Doyle Collection,
Toronto Public Library

• "Meddling Kids: A Children's Mystery Book Exhibit" (Osborn Collection of Early Children's Books, Lillian H. Smith Library, Toronto Public Library; runs through April 16, 2022). See digitized items from the collection here.

• "Cracking the Case: Sleuths in Speculative Fiction" (Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, Lillian H. Smith Library, Toronto Public Library; runs through April 2, 2022). See digitized items from the collection here.

• "A Study in Sherlock and His Creator: 50 Years of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection" (TD Gallery, Toronto Reference Library). See digitized items from the collection here.

"Mapping Fiction" exhibition, the Huntington.

The "Mapping Fiction" exhibition at Los Angeles' Huntington Library features the role of maps in fiction and is on view until May 2. It includes Loren Latker's "Shamus Town" map of the Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles and an orange crate label from Tarzana Hills (originally named in honor of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan).