So, I went and looked through archives of The Strand magazine to find the issue Edwin is reading from to Charles in the attic and I found it!
It’s the July 1924 issue, and the Max Carrados story featured is “The Bunch of Violets.”
It makes me emotional that he told Charles “Carrados, the Blind Detective was just becoming quite popular in my day" because he wasn’t only referring to “in my day” in the sense of it being in comparison to Charles’ day, but literally, this issue is from after his own time. 😭 He must have read the first Carrados collection that Ernest Bramah put out in 1914, which had the first eight stories. The next collection didn't come out until 1923, and Edwin would have been reading "The Bunch of Violets" for the first time when he read it to Charles from that 1924 magazine.
This issue also features a contribution from Arthur Conan Doyle, which sadly wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes story in this one like in many other issues of The Strand, but some memoirs of ACD’s. Though it’s still quite interesting, in that you get to see a bit of how much ACD wanted to do other projects than the Holmes stories - he writes, “When my immediate preoccupations after the war had been got rid of I settled down to attempt some literary work upon a larger and more ambitious scale than those Sherlock Holmes or Brigadier Gerard stories, which had occupied so much of my time.”
Edwin seemed to have a whole box of magazines there in the attic though, so it’s possible (and I like to think) that maybe a few issues from earlier years or even from his own time were there, in which case it’s very likely he could have read Charles some Sherlock Holmes as well! Especially as he asks Charles, “Not enjoying this one?” implying he’s read him several stories. For example, September 1914 featured “The Valley of Fear.” (I’m also including one of the illustrations of Holmes and Watson. I just know Edwin would love Granada Holmes. Just look at them!)
Also, I haven’t succeeded yet in finding an archived version of the July 1924 magazine that includes the back cover, which says “Twink” on it as we can see in the scene where Edwin is reading. It’s actually an ad for Twink brand laundry washing powder/soap flakes, popular at the time! I do love to think the writers had a bit of fun with the placement of that, though, because all they let us see in the frame is the word 🫵TWINK 🫵, hahaha. But it makes me even happier that it coincided with being on the back cover of the issue featuring Carrados! Love a bit of serendipity 😌
Here are some ads for Twink products from the 1920s and an example of the packaging:
This post brought to you by me being a massive nerd 🥰
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