Richard Lancelyn Green was a British editor, critic, and author. He was known as the expert who studied Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Background
Richard Lancelyn Gordon Green was born on July 10, 1953, in Bebington, Cheshire, United Kingdom. He was the youngest son of Roger Lancelyn Green, a writer who adapted Arthurian, Robin Hood, and Homeric traditional myths, and June Lancelyn Green (maiden name Burdett), a drama teacher.
Education
Richard Lancelyn Green studied at Bradfield College in Berkshire, United Kingdom from 1966 to 1971. Four years later, he earned a Master of Arts degree in English at University College, Oxford.
Career
The career of Richard Lancelyn Green was utterly and completely related to the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his masterpiece about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Green assisted to the meeting of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London for the first time at the age of eleven, and from that time on developed a strong interest in the field.
Richard Lancelyn collected a number of jobs, including surveyor’s assistant, editor, and researcher during his lifetime. Although, the collection was smaller than the one he built from Doyle’s original manuscripts and writings, Holmes memorabilia, and other attributes related to the detective.
Richard Lancelyn Green used his passion as the source of income writing his own books on the author and his most famous characters as well as editing allied works of others.
With John Michael Gibson, Green produced ‘Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle’, a massive recording of Doyle’s production. The publications devoted to Sherlock Holmes which Green edited include ‘Letters to Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘The Sherlock Holmes Letters’. Through letters to the press, the latter work explored Holmes’ impact on culture, as well as his history and methodology.
Green also edited such editions of Doyle’s as ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes’, and served as editor of the two-volume ‘Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories’. In addition, he collaborated with Gibson on the compiling of such volumes as ‘The Unknown Conan Doyle: Uncollected Stories and Essays on Photography’.
From 1996 to 1999, Richard Lancelyn Green chaired the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.
The last period of his life, Green concentrated on collecting materials for the three-volume biography of Conan Doyle he planned to publish. The volume wasn’t finished.
Personality
Richard Lancelyn Green had a good sense of humor and was noted for his generosity. He willingly shared both his rich collection of Holmes and Doyle materials and his knowledge of the topic.
An active member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, he regularly appeared on its ceremonies wearing a costume of 19th-century music hall master.
According to the author’s will, this huge collection was donated to the Portsmouth City Museum in Portsmouth, Hampshire, United Kingdom.