Vincent Starrett was a journalist, essayist, poet, novelist, literary critic, and biographer of Sherlock Holmes. He earned the admiration of bibliophiles throughout the world and the honorary title "Number One American Bookman" through his many writings about the pleasures of books and his activities as a book collector and bibliographer.

Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett was born in Toronto on 26 October 1886. He was the first of four sons of Robert Polk Starrett, an accountant, and Margaret Deniston Young Starrett, a well-educated and deeply religious woman who was the daughter of the Toronto publisher and bookseller John Young; she would spend her last years as a missionary among the Native Americans of western Canada. The doctor, thinking that Starrett had been born dead, wrapped him in a newspaper and placed him under the bed while attending to the mother; the baby's cries soon revealed the mistake. Starrett would later comment...