David Randall & Indiana Connections

David Randall, Sherlock Holmes, & Thomas J. Wise

David Randall made his career as a rare book dealer, working with clients such as J. K. Lilly, Jr., founding donor of the Lilly Library. Because of this relationship with Lilly, Randall ended his career as the first director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University.

Randall was a lifelong Sherlock Holmes enthusiast. He was invested as a member of the BSI in 1951, but was attending BSI dinners as early as 1949.

Here, we see the development of his proposition that Sherlock Holmes must have interacted with Thomas J. Wise, an important bibliographer and head of the Bibliographical Society in London, later unmasked as a devious forger and book vandal. Randall writes to Christopher Morley with the idea; Morley replies positively. The subsequent article appears in the Baker Street Journal, and is reprinted years later by Randall’s son.

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