Vincent Starrett (1886-1974) was a Chicago journalist who became one of the world's foremost experts on Sherlock Holmes. A books columnist for the Chicago Tribune , he also wrote biographies of authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Ambrose Bierce, various books on books and book collecting, plus Sherlockian pastiches and numerous short stories and novels. A founding member of the Baker Street Irregulars, he is perhaps known best today for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes , an imaginative biography of the great detective. Otto Penzler , the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of the Mysterious Press (1975); Mysterious Press.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City's Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection , 1977, and The Lineup , 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from Noircon and The Strand Magazine . He has edited more than 80 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.