Christopher Morley
Christopher Darlington Morley ( born May 5, 1890 in Haverford, Pennsylvania, † 28 March 1957) was an American publisher, writer and Sherlockianer.
Life
Morley was born as the son of Mathematics Professor Frank Morley. He studied at Haverford and earned a Rhodes Scholarship in 1910 at New College, Oxford. There he came into contact with the theologian Ronald Knox and heard his satirical speech Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes.
After returning to America, Morley worked as a columnist and editor of several journals. He has published several popular stories and novels such as Parnassus on Wheels (1917 ), The Haunted Bookshop (1919), Thunder on the Left ( 1925) or Kitty Foyle (1939) ( under the title of Miss Kitty 1940 by Sam Wood with Ginger Rogers in the title role in a movie ).
First, he wrote in Philadelphia for the Ladies Home Journal and the Evening Public Ledger. In 1920 he returned to New York and worked temporarily for the Literary Review supplement of the Evening Post. In 1926 he was co-founder of the Saturday Review of Literature, which he headed from 1924 to 1940.
In addition, he organized in New York the 'Three -Hours for Lunch Club ', a society organized regularly irregular event, from which the Sherlock Holmes Society of the Baker Street Irregulars should emerge. Part of the club life was the Entertainment formed about Sherlock Holmes stories. Morley laid down rules to the Sherlockian Reading and wrote himself numerous contributions in this sense. Best known are his Study In Memorium: Sherlock Holmes (1930 ) and the preface to the Doubleday edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
Works (selection)
- Parnassus and Pegasus. Humboldt - Verlag, Wien; Stuttgart 1951.
- Kitty. Humanitas Publishing House, Zurich, 1941.
- Children in a dream. Bruno Cassirer, Berlin 1930.