Poet, Novelist, and Noted Sherlock Holmes Connoisseur Christopher Morley Writes an Autograph Collector

Christopher Morley was a novelist, essayist and poet known for novels like Parnassus on Wheels and Kitty Foyle. The latter was one of the first books to openly discuss abortion and was turned into a Oscar winning movie starring Ginger Rogers.

Autograph Letter Signed, no date but post 1920 as it is on his letterhead from Roslyn Heights, New York, to Mr. Bigelow. “If you are going to cultivate an appetite for ‘autographs’ let me give you a valuable suggestion; your victims will be more likely to come through if you send ‘em a stamped addressed envelope. This is not due to parsimony but a legitimate desire to save time and labor. Oh God, if you knew to what proportions this cruel lust has spread in our once untainted land! Anyhow, good luck.”

Author of more than 100 novels, books of essays, and volumes of poetry, Morley is probably best known today for his first novels, Parnassus on Wheels (1917), The Haunted Bookshop (1919), and Thunder on the Left (1925).

Morley was one of the founders and a longtime contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. A highly gregarious man, he was the mainstay of what he dubbed the “Three Hours for Lunch Club”. Out of enthusiasm for the Sherlock Holmes stories, he helped found the Baker Street Irregulars and wrote the introduction to the standard omnibus edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes.