Edward Gorey, mystery fan.

Sign for the Edward Gorey House.
Photo by Elizabeth Foxwell.

I recently visited the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, MA, which was a fascinating place—full of collections compiled by the distinguished artist and author (winner of the Tony Award for set design and costume design for Dracula—the docent referred to the Gorey House as "the house that Dracula built"). His book collection included some 26,000 volumes and is now housed at San Diego State University (about 35 percent of it can be searched here).

Gorey (1925–2000) was a devoted mystery fan. A short browse through his library yields 41 works by Agatha Christie, 39 works by Wilkie Collins, 30 books by Guy Boothby, 24 books by Margaret Sutton [Rachel Beebe], 16 Nancy Drew books, 16 novels by Phoebe Atwood Taylor, 11 works by Jane Langton, 8 books by Patricia Wentworth, 7 books by Catherine Aird, and 6 books by Ross Macdonald [Kenneth Millar].

Some sample titles:

• Catherine Aird [Kinn Hamilton McIntosh], The Religious Body (1980 ed.); Henrietta Who? (1981 ed.); The Stately Home Murder (1980 ed.)
• Grant Allen, Miss Cayley's Adventures (1899)
• Agatha Christie, Death in the Air (1935); Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories (1985); Mort Sur Nil [Death on the Nile] (1948; note that Gorey earned a degree in French literature from Harvard); Murder in Three Acts (1934) 
• Wilkie Collins, Armadale (1866); No Name (1978 ed.); The Dead Secret (1979 ed.)
• J.S. Fletcher, The Markenmore Mystery (1923); Ravensdene Court (1922)
• Michael Gilbert, The Black Seraphim (1985); End-Game (1983)
• Patrick Hamilton, Hangover Square (1941); Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953)
• Jane Langton, Divine Inspiration (1994 ed.); Emily Dickinson Is Dead (1985); Murder at the Gardner (1989)
• Ross Macdonald, The Doomsters (1958); The Blue Hammer (1976)
• A.E.W. Mason, They Wouldn't Be Chessmen (1985 ed.)
• Ed McBain [Evan Hunter], Lightning (1985)
• Phoebe Atwood Taylor, The Cape Cod Mystery (1965 ed., 1988 ed.); The Criminal C.O.D. (1972 ed.); Death Lights a Candle (1989 ed.), Diplomatic Corpse (1986 ed.); The Left Leg (1988 ed.)
• Patricia Wentworth, Grey Mask (1952 ed.); Poison in the Pen (1980 ed.); She Came Back (1981 ed.)
  
  
  

  

  Edward Gorey in his kitchen, Aug 1999. 
  Wikimedia Commons, 
  Photographer: Christopher Seufert 

  
  

Encouraging new scholars in bibliography.

The New Scholars Program of the Bibliographical Society of America seeks to encourage early-career scholars, graduate students, librarians, booksellers, and collectors in bibliography (defined as any research that deals with the creation, production, publication, distribution, reception, transmission, and subsequent history of textual artifacts). Each year, BSA invites three new scholars to give a 15-minute presentation on their research and offers an honorarium of $1,000. This year, the presentations will be virtual. The application deadline is September 8, 2020. Further details here.

Essays wanted for Longmire collection.

Clues editorial board member Rachel Schaffer seeks a few more essays for her edited collection on Walt Longmire (both the TV series and books by Craig Johnson) to be published by McFarland. Visit the MSU Billings English department Web site for Schaffer's email address.

Northern Public Radio on NIU's dime novel collection.

Northern Public Radio highlights the digitization of the Johannsen Collection of dime novels and story papers at the Northern Illinois University libraries. The NIU libraries, in partnership with Villanova University, will digitize 5400 dime novels through a grant of nearly $450,000 from the Digitizing Hidden Collections initiative of the Council on Library and Information Resources. More than 2000 works compose the library's current online offerings, including dime novels by early mystery writer-editor Metta Victoria Fuller Victor and the extensive Nick Carter series.

For GivingTuesday: Consider mystery collections.

Phoebe Atwood
Taylor. From
Barnard College's
Mortarboard, 1930

Today's Giving Tuesday focuses attention on charitable contributions, as people consider the organizations or causes to support or to make a contribution in someone's name during the holiday season.

Libraries and archives need support to acquire, preserve, catalog, and digitize their collections as well as to present exhibitions or other programs involving their holdings. Consider contributing to your alma mater's library or one of the following collections with significant mystery elements:

• Ray and Pat Browne Popular Culture Library, Bowling Green State University

• Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico (home of the papers of Tony Hillerman)

• Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University (home of manuscripts of many authors such as Harry Kemelman, Jane Langton, Elizabeth Linington, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, Hillary Waugh, and Donald Westlake)

• Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington (home of the papers of author-critic Anthony Boucher and Mystery Writers of America)

• Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (home of Erle Stanley Gardner's "plot wheel")

• Rose Library, Emory University (home of one of the largest collections of Victorian yellowbacks)

• Special Collections, University of California Irvine (home of the papers of Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald, and Margaret Millar)

• Special Collections, University of South Carolina (home of the papers of James Ellroy, George V. Higgins, and John Jakes. An ongoing and major project of the USC libraries is the preservation and digitization of 2000 Fox Movietone newsreels.)

• Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research (home of the papers of Vera Caspary, Kirk Douglas, and Dalton Trumbo. The center has recently established a portal at the Internet Archive that includes a home movie of theater legends Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.)

The Library of Congress offers several options for supporting its work (don't forget that it houses the papers of luminaries such as James M. Cain), including the National Book Festival.

Serves God, solves crime.

Part of the Colorado State University Libraries' International Poster Collection is this one, seen at left, for the Cadfael PBS Mystery! series (based, of course, on the novels by Ellis Peters).

For further details on the poster and its artist, Seymour Chwast, go here.