The Books


click on titles for notes, tables of contents, introductions,

excerpts and, beginning with the first three volumes,

contemporary reviews*



Edgar W. Smith: Prolegomena to Any Future Biography

PART 1: Ancestry -- Parents and Birth -- Growing Up in

Brooklyn -- Early Work and the World War -- Notes.


PART 2: Armistice Day in Paris -- Home to a New Life --

General Motors Export Company -- Posted Overseas Again --

Organization Man & Free Trade Expert -- Notes.


PART 3: The Depression Arrives -- Growing International Crisis --

         Edgar reads The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes --

   GM in Nazi Germany -- Notes.


PART 4: Sherlockian Stirrings -- Edgar Rises Higher at Work --

         A Baker Street Irregular at Last -- The Approach of War in

           Europe -- “Mr. Mooney Tries to Stop the Second World War”

-- Notes.


PART 5: Buttons-cum-Commissionaire -- America Remains

Neutral -- Baker Street Irregulars in a Different Sense?

-- Getting to Know the Irregulars -- Notes.


The Great Alkali Plainsmen of Greater Kansas City (1988)


“Dear Starrett--”/“Dear Briggs--”  (1989)


Irregular Memories of the ’Thirties  (1990)


Irregular Records of the Early ’Forties  (1991)


Irregular Proceedings of the Mid ’Forties  (1995)


Irregular Crises of the Late ’Forties  (1999)

    with a link to Philip Shreffler’s chapter “The Original Series BSJ: Quintessence of Irregular,” and the 1951 BSI dinner photograph at the Racquet Club with notes about it as the new venue as of 1948.


Disjecta Membra: Stray Scraps of Irregular History  (2001)


“Certain Rites, and Also Certain Duties”  (2009)

    Including the complete text of ch. 3, “The Second Most Dangerous Toast in New York.”


Sources and Methods: A companion volume to the novel Baker Street Irregular (2015)




TO COME:


The 1950s Volumes




* The first three volumes’ reviews, by Irregulars Albert & Julia Rosenblatt, W. T. Rabe, and Donald A. Yates, are taken from contemporary issues of Baker Street Miscellanea, whose entire nineteen-year, 76-issue run is now available on CD-ROM. For information and to order, contact co-founder and final editor Donald Pollock at donaldkpollock@gmail.com.




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