The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection Lancelyn Green Bequest

THE DOCUMENTS OF THE COLLECTION

This is the largest section of the Richard Lancelyn Green Collection and to date has been the most challenging section to sort.  The collection testifies to the worldwide interest in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes and to the wide breadth of interests Conan Doyle developed through his life.

Currently around 70% of the total archive has been added to the catalogue, and thus available for public access.

The extent of catalogued material is as follows:

  • Lancelyn Green working papers - 5%
  • Doyle Family papers and photographs - 42%
  • Exhbitions - 50%
  • Spiritualism - 65%
  • Newspapers - 100% of whole papers & photocopies - otherwise 64% of remaining clippings
  • Victorian and Edwardian world - 100%
  • Drama and dramatisations - 100%
  • Sherlock Holmes Phenomena - 100%
  • Groups and Societies - 100%
  • Auction and Sale Catalogues - 100%
  • Scrapbooks - 100%
  • Book articles/ephemera - 100%
Volunteers are working hard to sort Richard Lancelyn Green's own correspondence and working papers, this being one of the most extensive sections in the collection.  This is the core of our collector's work, tracing his friendships, contacts and acquisition of the materials, representing a man passionately devoted to a cause, much as his hero, Arthur Conan Doyle was passionate about justice, truth and the worlds of fiction and folklore.

The archive and research room is on the 2nd Floor of the Central Library in the Portsmouth History Centre