Vincent Starrett
| Vincent Starrett | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 26, 1886 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | January 5, 1974 (aged 87) Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | newspaperman, writer |
| Nationality | United States |
| Genre | Detective fiction, fantasy, horror |
Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett (/ˈstɛərˌət/; October 26, 1886 – January 5, 1974), known as Vincent Starrett, was an American writer, newspaperman, and bibliophile.
Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett was born above his grandfather's bookshop in Toronto. His father moved the family to Chicago in 1889 where Starrett attended John Marshall High School. Starrett landed a job as a cub reporter with the Chicago Inter-Ocean in 1905. When that paper folded, two years later, he began working for the Chicago Daily News as a crime reporter, a feature writer and finally a war correspondent in Mexico from 1914 to 1915. Starrett turned to writing mystery and supernatural fiction for the pulp magazines during the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1920, he wrote a Sherlock Holmes pastiche entitled The Adventure of the Unique 'Hamlet'; Starrett on at least one occasion said that the press-run was 100 copies, but on others he said that it was 200 copies. The plan was to have half the press-run with the imprint of bookseller Walter M. Hill, and half with Starrett's imprint; the printer misunderstood the instructions and only 10 have Starrett's imprint. Randall Stock has done a census of surviving copies. He located one unbound and nine bound copies with the Starrett imprint, and 41 copies (with a possible addition of 4 whose location is unknown) with the Hill imprint. Stock believes that the press run was 100 plus 10, and the number of surviving copies seems to confirm that number. This story involved the detective with a missing 1604 edition of Shakespeare's play, which included an inscription by the playwright. Starrett's most famous work, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, was published in 1933. He retired from The Chicago Tribune in 1967 where he had written a book column, "Books Alive," for 25 years. Starrett was one of the founders of The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic), a Chicago chapter of the Baker Street Irregulars.
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