Book: Coin of the Canonical Realm by Nicholas Utechin

“Holmes took the book from my hand.”

– The Adventure of The Three Garridebs (3GAR)

In this, the first monograph published by the John H Watson Society, Nicholas Utechin sets out to make 21st century sense of all the 19th century mentions of money in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Have you ever stopped to wonder exactly what a ‘half-sovereign’ would buy today? Find out what Mary Morstan stood to gain if the Agra treasure had not been hurled out of the Aurora. How much in dollars – then and now – would Neville St. Clair’s daily begging takings have amounted to? Could Sir Henry Baskerville’s $6 boots have been bought for an equivalent sum in 2014?

Coin of the Canonical Realm is an important work whose validity might not survive all-engulfing world inflation, but currently provides the first ever detailed snapshot of the practicalities of Holmes’s financial world.

About the author: NICHOLAS UTECHIN is a Director-at-Large of the John H. Watson Society (‘Rex’), a Baker Street Irregular (‘The Ancient British Barrow’) and an Honorary Member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London (having edited “The Sherlock Holmes Journal” from 1976-2006). He is a freelance journalist and worked for many years as a producer and presenter on BBC radio. He lives in Oxford, U.K.

Through a partnership agreement with the John H Watson Society, we are able to offer copies of this work in our online shop.  Print copies of the monograph can be purchased for $12 and a PDF download can be purchased for $10.