Jon Lellenberg

Background

Jon Lellenberg was born on February 6, 1946, in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. He is the son of Jack and Jessie Hazelbaker Lellenberg.

Education

Jon Lellenberg studied at Pembroke Country Day School till 1963. Then he received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Southern California School of International Relations in 1967. Three years later, he received a Master of Arts degree. In 1996 he received a Master of Science degree at National War College.

Career

Jon Lellenberg first work was writing and editing of introduction to John Kendrick Bangs’s Shylock Homes: His Posthumous Memoirs (1973). Lellenberg’s second work, The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was published in 1987 and established his reputation among Holmes enthusiasts and academics. The book is a collection of critical biographical articles on Conan Doyle which Lellenberg gathered from Doyle scholars and addresses both Doyle’s autobiographical writings and biographical studies of him. A second revised and expanded edition appeared in 1997 on CD-ROM as The Works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Lellenberg grappled with one of the most intriguing issues of Doyle studies in Nova 57 Minor: The Waxing and Waning of the Sixty-first Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1990. This book explains the history of the Holmes story “The Man Who Was Wanted,” written after Doyle had killed off his detective but not discovered until 1942. Because of controversies surrounding the mysterious origins of the story and how it was intended to fit into the Holmes opus, it was not published until 1948. Lellenberg’s book covers the history of this Holmes story as well as the conflicts between the executors of Doyle’s literary estate and others who wished to rush the story to publication.

In addition to these scholarly works, Lellenberg has edited five histories of the Baker Street Irregulars, a Sherlock Holmes society to which Lellenberg belongs. He has also co-edited Holmes for the Holidays, an anthology of fourteen Christmas-oriented Holmes stories by contemporary writers, published in 1996. His recent books are The Ghosts in Baker Street: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, and Mr. Morley Takes the Train.

Lellenberg was a Pentagon official for many years from 1975 and traveled extensively in Europe, during which time he became well acquainted with the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and the Danish equivalent of the Baker Street Irregulars, the Sherlock Holmes Klubben i Danmark, along with the Cold War history and landscape of the Continent. He retired from the Pentagon in 2006, after spending his last several years as Director for Policy and Strategy for its Special Operations and Counterterrorism Bureau. In 2006 he became President of Hazelbaker & Lellenberg.

Achievements

• Jon Lellenberg is particularly known as the author of numerous books on matters of Sherlockian and Doylean. He received various awards including the Two-Shilling Award, Morley-Montgomery Award, and Defense Monitoring Services Medal from the United States Department of Defense.

Works

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  • Irregular Crises of the Late Forties: An Archival History of the Baker Street Irregulars, June 1947- December 1950

    (The latest volume of the Baker Street Irregulars' Archiva...)

    1998
  • The Ghosts in Baker Street: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes

    (Featuring an all-star cast of Doyle devotees that include...)

    2006
  • Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters

    (An annotated collection of the esteemed author's private ...)

    2007
  • Nova 57 Minor: The Waxing and Waning of the Sixty-first Adventure of Sherlock Holmes

    (Pastiche or hoax? Honest error or deliberate forgery? Whe...)

    1990
  • The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Thirteen Biographers in Search of a Life

    (Many engage in the quest, but no biographer yet has captu...)

    1987
  • "Dear Starrett", "Dear Briggs": A Compendium of Correspondence Between Vincent Starrett and Gray Chandler Briggs (1930-1934)

    (The book includes letters dealing with Sherlock Holmes.)

    1989
  • Holmes for the Holidays

    (Master sleuth Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick, Dr. Watso...)

    1996
  • Shylock Homes: His Posthumous Memoirs 1973
  • Irregular Memories of the Thirties: An Archival History of the Baker Street Irregulars First Decade: 1930-1940 1990
  • Irregular Records of the Early Forties: An Archival History of the Baker Street Irregulars, January 1941-March 1944 1991
  • Irregular Proceedings of the Mid Forties: An Archival History of the Baker Street Irregulars, March 1944-June 1947
  • Mr. Morley Takes the Train 2016

Views

When not writing or busy on other projects, Jon Lellenberg likes to read history and biography. He enjoys American and British cultural history and finds Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and P. G. Wodehouse relaxing and therapeutic. One of his earliest fiction heroes was D’Artagnan.

Quotations: "My writing, while essentially unrelated to my work as a defense policy analyst and national security strategist at the Pentagon keeps me from becoming quite exasperated in that sphere as I might be without it."

Membership

Jon Lellenberg has long been “Thucydides,” the Historian of the Baker Street Irregulars. He also is invested in the BSI as “Rodger Prescott of evil memory.” He belongs to numerous scion clubs and is active with the University of Minnesota Sherlock Holmes Collections. He has been the representative of The Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. for many years.

Interests

• history, biography, and strategic philosophy

• Sport & Clubs

  baseball

• Music & Bands

  jazz

Connections

Jon Lellenberg is married to Susan Brene Jewell. The marriage produced one child, Nicholas George.

Father:

Jack Lellenberg

Mother:

Jessie Hazelbaker Lellenberg

Wife:

Susan Brene Jewell