The Morley-Montgomery Award was established in 1958 through the generosity of legendary bookdealer Lew D. Feldman, to be given each year to the author of the best article in The Baker Street Journal. The original award consisted of $100 donated by Feldman until his death in 1976, and after that contributed by The Baker Street Irregulars. The amount of the award was increased to $500 in 1995, and beginning in 2019, the Award has been underwritten by Les and Sharon Klinger.
The award is named after Christopher Morley, the founder of the BSI, and fellow Irregular James Montgomery.
The Morley-Montgomery Award was suspended in 1980, and was reinstated in 1995 with a generous cash prize for the best article published in the BSJ during the year. Edgar W. Smith, writing in “The Editor’s Commonplace Book” in 1958 said, “I only hope it will not tend to make aspiring professionals out of the laborers-of-love whose efforts are, and always will be, the bulwark of the Journal’s reputation.”
If you’d like to read ALL of the award-winning essays from 1958 to 2011, you can get them in the eBSJ PDF Archive.
See photos of recent winning authors.
Recipients of the Morley-Montgomery Award
Eric Scace (2023)
“Five Quarter Centuries of Confusion Over ‘The Missing Three-Quarter’”
Nicholas Utechin (2022)
“For Christ’s Sake: An Evaluation of Jay Finley Christ”
Russell Merritt (2021)
“The Doubleday Omnibus Edition: ‘The Madman’s Sherlock Holmes’”
Jessica Schilling (2020)
“Just His Type: An Analysis of the Découpé Warning in The Hound of the Baskervilles”
Ira B. Matetsky (2019)
“Another Sherlockian Myth Debunked: Time to Turn the Page(t)?”
Leslie S. Klinger (2018)
“The Origins of Sherlock Holmes: Crime Fiction before Conan Doyle”
Susan E. Bailey (2017)
“Whitehall Place Irregulars: Female Searchers and Suspects in Nineteenth-century London”
Bill Mason (2016)
“Looking to Latin America: Canonical Notions from South of the Border”
Chris Redmond (2015)
“Dr. Hill Barton Pays a Call”
Timothy S. Greer (2014)
“Murger in Baker Street”
Anastasia Klimchynskaya (2013)
“A Study in Scarlet and the Study of Mankind: Sherlock Holmes and Pope’s Essay on Man”
Peter Calamai (2012)
“Why He Isn’t ‘Sir Sherlock’ Today”
Sonia Fetherston (2011)
“‘I Met Harry Murcher’: Getting Acquainted with Holland Grove’s Elusive P.C.”
Michael Pollak (2010)
“The Spies Who Never Were with Some Observations on Holmes’s Retirement”
Marshall Berdan (2009)
“Holmes Alone: Glimpses of Post-Watson Baker Street In ‘The Mazarin Stone'”
Mattias Bostrom (2008)
“The Humble Dr. Mortimer: On the Real Swedish Pathological Society”
Ray Betzner (2007)
“The Wicked Beginnings of a Baker Street Classic!”
Harold Billings (2006)
“The Materia Medica of Sherlock Holmes”
Catherine Cooke (2005)
“Mrs. Hudson: A Legend in Her Own Lodging House”
Donald K. Pollock & Andrew Solberg (2003)
“The Case of ‘J’: A Psychoanalytic Case Study with Particular Attention to ‘Marriage Neurosis'”
Constantine Rossakis (2004)
“Thaddeus Sholto: (Mis)Diagnosed”
Robert S. Schultz (2002)
“Upon the Dating of Blood Stains”
Thomas Cynkin (2001)
“James Watson, M.D.”
Ben Vizoskie (2000)
“Who Wrote the American Chapters of A Study In Scarlet?”
S.E. Dahlinger (1999)
“The Sherlock Holmes We Never Knew”
Jon Lellenberg (1998)
“Entertainment and Fantasy: The 1940 BSI Dinner”
Susan Rice (1997)
“Dr. Watson’s Hidden Addiction”
Philip Shreffler (1996)
“Quintessence of Irregular: The Old Series of The Baker Street Journal”
Margaret Nydell (1995)
“On the Chaldean Influences in Cornish”
Howard Brody (1979)
“The Location of Baskerville Hall”
Richard Luman (1978)
“The Second Hand in ‘The Second Stain'”
Jack Tracy (1977)
“St. Saviour’s Near King’s Cross”
H.C. Potter (1976)
“John H. Watson, Word Painter”
Michael L. Burton (1975)
“On the Hound”
Peter E. Blau (1974)
“In Memoriam: Muzaffar Ad-Din”
J.C. Prager & Al Silverstein (1973)
“Lowenstein of Prague”
Andrew Jay Peck (1972)
“The Solitary Man-Uscript”
Henry C. Potter (1971)
“Reflections on Canonical Vehicles and Something of the Horse”
Edward A. Merrill (1970)
“Holmes and Brunton: Civil Engineers”
William H. Miller (1969)
“Some Observations on the Alleged Use of Cocaine By Mr. Sherlock Holmes”
Poul Anderson (1968)
“The Archetypal Holmes”
William S. Baring-Gould (1967)
“Mrs. Hudson’s Inheritance”
Alan H. Foster (1966)
“On the Location of Dr. John H. Watson’s Tin-Dispatch Box”
Henry T. Folsom (1965)
“My Biblical Knowledge is a Bit Rusty”
Ronald S. Bonn (1964)
“The Problem of the Postulated Doctor”
Edward F. Clark, Jr. (1963)
“Study of An Unknown Tale”
S. Tupper Bigelow (1962)
“The Hoof-Marks in ‘The Priory School'”
Robert Keith Leavitt (1961)
“The Origin of 221B Worship”
Jerry Neal Williamson (1960)
“The Adventure of the Bugged Bird”
Daniel L. Moriarty (1959)
“The Woman Who Beat Sherlock Holmes”
Poul Anderson (1958)
“Irregular Poetics”
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