sir arthur conan doyle biography book

Arthur Conan Doyle

(1859-1930)

Who Was Arthur Conan Doyle?

In 1890, Arthur Conan Doyle's novel, A Study in Scarlet introduced the character of Detective Sherlock Holmes. Doyle would go on to write 60 stories about Sherlock Holmes. He also strove to spread his Spiritualism faith through a series of books that were written from 1918 to 1926. Doyle died of a heart attack in Crowborough, England on July 7, 1930.

On May 22, 1859, Arthur Conan Doyle was born to an affluent, strict Irish-Catholic family in Edinburgh, Scotland. Although Doyle's family was well-respected in the art world, his father, Charles, who was a life-long alcoholic, had few accomplishments to speak of. Doyle's mother, Mary, was a lively and well-educated woman who loved to read. She particularly delighted in telling her young son outlandish stories. Her great enthusiasm and animation while spinning wild tales sparked the child's imagination. As Doyle would later recall in his biography, "In my early childhood, as far as I can remember anything at all, the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life."

At the age of 9, Doyle bid a tearful goodbye to his parents and was shipped off to England, where he would attend Hodder Place, Stonyhurst — a Jesuit preparatory school — from 1868 to 1870. Doyle then went on to study at Stonyhurst College for the next five years. For Doyle, the boarding-school experience was brutal: many of his classmates bullied him, and the school practiced ruthless corporal punishment against its students. Over time, Doyle found solace in his flair for storytelling and developed an eager audience of younger students.

Medical Education and Career

When Doyle graduated from Stonyhurst College in 1876, his parents expected that he would follow in his family's footsteps and study art, so they were surprised when he decided to pursue a medical degree at the University of Edinburgh instead. At med school, Doyle met his mentor, Professor Dr. Joseph Bell, whose keen powers of observation would later inspire Doyle to create his famed fictional detective character, Sherlock Holmes. At the University of Edinburgh, Doyle also had the good fortune to meet classmates and future fellow authors James Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson. While a medical student, Doyle took his own first stab at writing, with a short story called The Mystery of Sasassa Valley . That was followed by a second story, The American Tale , which was published in London Society .

During Doyle's third year of medical school, he took a ship surgeon's post on a whaling ship sailing for the Arctic Circle. The voyage awakened Doyle's sense of adventure, a feeling that he incorporated into a story, Captain of the Pole Star .

In 1880, Doyle returned to medical school. Back at the University of Edinburgh, Doyle became increasingly invested in Spiritualism or "Psychic religion," a belief system that he would later attempt to spread through a series of his written works. By the time he received his Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1881, Doyle had denounced his Roman Catholic faith.

Doyle's first paying job as a doctor took the form of a medical officer's position aboard the steamship Mayumba, traveling from Liverpool to Africa. After his stint on the Mayumba, Doyle settled in Plymouth, England for a time. When his funds were nearly tapped out, he relocated to Portsmouth and opened his first practice. He spent the next few years struggling to balance his burgeoning medical career with his efforts to gain recognition as an author. Doyle would later give up medicine altogether, in order to devote all of his attention to his writing and his faith.

Personal Life

In 1885, while still struggling to make it as a writer, Doyle met and married his first wife, Louisa Hawkins. The couple moved to Upper Wimpole Street and had two children, a daughter and a son. In 1893, Louisa was diagnosed with tuberculosis. While Louisa was ailing, Doyle developed an affection for a young woman named Jean Leckie. Louisa ultimately died of tuberculosis in Doyle's arms, in 1906. The following year, Doyle would remarry to Jean Leckie, with whom he would have two sons and a daughter.

Books: Sherlock Holmes

In 1886, newly married and still struggling to make it as an author, Doyle started writing the mystery novel A Tangled Skein . Two years later, the novel was renamed A Study in Scarlet and published in Beeton's Christmas Annual . A Study in Scarlet , which first introduced the wildly popular characters Detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Watson, finally earned Doyle the recognition he had so desired. It was the first of 60 stories that Doyle would pen about Sherlock Holmes over the course of his writing career. Also, in 1887, Doyle submitted two letters about his conversion to Spiritualism to a weekly periodical called Light .

Doyle continued to actively participate in the Spiritualist movement from 1887 to 1916, during which time he wrote three books that experts consider largely autobiographical. These include Beyond the City (1893), The Stark Munro Letters (1895) and A Duet with an Occasional Chorus (1899). Upon achieving success as a writer, Doyle decided to retire from medicine. Throughout this period, he additionally produced a handful of historical novels including one about the Napoleonic Era called The Great Shadow in 1892, and his most famous historical novel, Rodney Stone , in 1896.

The prolific author also composed four of his most popular Sherlock Holmes books during the 1890s and early 1900s: The Sign of Four (1890), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894) and The Hound of Baskervilles , published in 1901. In 1893, to Doyle's readers' disdain, he had attempted to kill off his Sherlock Holmes character in order to focus more on writing about Spiritualism. In 1901, however, Doyle reintroduced Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of Baskervilles and later brought him back to life in The Adventure of the Empty House so the lucrative character could earn Doyle the money to fund his missionary work. Doyle also strove to spread his faith through a series of written works, consisting of The New Revolution (1918), The Vital Message (1919), The Wanderings of a Spiritualist (1921) and History of Spiritualism (1926).

In 1928, Doyle's final twelve stories about Sherlock Holmes were published in a compilation entitled The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes .

Having recently been diagnosed with Angina Pectoris, Doyle stubbornly ignored his doctor's warnings, and in the fall of 1929, embarked on a spiritualism tour through the Netherlands. He returned home with chest pains so severe that he needed to be carried on shore and was thereafter almost entirely bedridden at his home in Crowborough, England. Rising one last time on July 7, 1930, Doyle collapsed and died in his garden while clutching his heart with one hand and holding a flower in the other.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Arthur Conan Doyle
• Birth Year: 1859
• Birth date: May 22, 1859
• Birth City: Edinburgh
• Birth Country: Scotland
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Author Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 60 mystery stories featuring the wildly popular detective character Sherlock Holmes and his loyal assistant Watson.
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Gemini
• Hodder Place, Stonyhurst
• Stonyhurst College
• University of Edinburgh
• Nacionalities
• Scot (Scotland)
• Death Year: 1930
• Death date: July 7, 1930
• Death City: Crowborough
• Death Country: United Kingdom

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Arthur Conan Doyle Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/arthur-conan-doyle
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• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: June 17, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014
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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Introduction, general overviews.

• Biographies
• Reference Works
• Bibliographies
• Sherlock Holmes
• Professor Challenger and Brigadier Gerard
• Mystery and Horror Short Fiction
• Historical Fiction
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• Media Interpretations

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Tom Bragg LAST REVIEWED: 02 March 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 02 March 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199799558-0018

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (b. 1859–d. 1930) was a Scottish physician, writer, and spiritualist most famous for being the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Extraordinarily prolific and multifaceted, Conan Doyle composed not only the Sherlock Holmes fiction, which comprises four novels and fifty-six short stories, but also fictional series about other recurring characters such as Professor Challenger; lengthy and detailed historical romances; numerous horror, mystery, science fiction and adventure stories; and a series of nonfiction books on spiritualist topics. He also wrote a history of the Boer War, for which he received a knighthood, and a popular autobiography. Though Conan Doyle considered his historical novels and later spiritual writings to constitute his most important work, today he is most read and studied for his contributions to genre fiction, especially the enduringly popular Sherlock Holmes series.

Articles and books discussing the Sherlock Holmes stories, adaptations, and pop culture manifestations are abundant. Critical takes on Conan Doyle’s other writings are harder to come by, although his work is often discussed in critical perspectives of contemporaries such as Kipling, Rider Haggard, and Stevenson. Below are listed a few places for the beginner to get started, as well a sampling of some of the most interesting recent articles. Hall 1978 , Orel 1992 , and Hodgson 1994 together offer a useful sampling of essays covering a broad range of Conan Doyle’s fictional works. Cox 1985 and Jaffe 1987 are simple and straightforward critical and biographical overviews. Eyles 1986 is an accessible and popular chronological account of Conan Doyle’s career, with the focus mostly on the Sherlock Holmes stories and phenomenon. Clausen 1984 situates Sherlock Holmes within late Victorian ideas of normalcy. Rosenberg 1974 is a semiclassic of Sherlock Holmes criticism, examining the stories for allegorical devices.

Clausen, Christopher. “Sherlock Holmes, Order, and the Late-Victorian Mind.” Georgia Review 38.1 (Spring 1984): 104–123.

Clausen’s smart article connects the detective story as a genre with domestic desires for order and normalcy, with the detective figured as the repairer of fissures in the social order.

Cox, Don Richard. Arthur Conan Doyle . New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985.

Cox’s book provides a brief biography of Conan Doyle and a solid discussion of his work, with a focus on the Sherlock Holmes fiction. Though brief, the book adequately details Conan Doyle’s forays into historical fiction and other genres.

Eyles, Allen. Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration . New York: Harper and Row, 1986.

Published on the one hundredth anniversary of the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet , this glossy, illustrated overview of the Sherlock Holmes mythos provides an unexpectedly thorough and considerate portrait of Conan Doyle the man. Though not a scholarly work by any means, Eyles’s survey is an accessible and informative place to begin a study of the Holmes phenomenon, examining the creation and development of the original stories as well as considering various multimedia adaptations.

Hall, Trevor. Sherlock Holmes and His Creator . London: Duckworth, 1978.

Despite the title, this collection of essays by Hall explores Conan Doyle’s writings variously, not limiting itself to discussing the Sherlock Holmes stories. Like Jeffery Meikle’s article a few years earlier, Hall makes a scholarly and intelligent attempt to comprehend Conan Doyle’s spiritualist conversion.

Hodgson, John A., ed. Sherlock Holmes: The Major Stories with Critical Essays . Boston: Bedford, 1994.

Anthology reprints some the most important short stories including “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Red-Headed League,” interspersed with interpretive essays. Novitiates should begin here for any critical overview of Sherlock Holmes.

Jaffe, Jacqueline A. Arthur Conan Doyle . Twayne’s English Author Series. Boston: Twayne, 1987.

Books in Twayne’s English Author Series provide a brief, mostly chronological overview of the subject’s life and oeuvre. Jaffe’s book focuses especially on the Holmes fiction but pays ample attention to the historical novels and the scientific romances. Like most studies of Conan Doyle, the spiritualist writings of his late career are relatively neglected.

Orel, Harold, ed. Critical Essays on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . New York: G. K. Hall, 1992.

An excellent and varied anthology that includes Stephen Knight’s “The Case of the Great Detective” and other oft-cited pieces on Sherlock Holmes. Also includes pieces on the other fiction and Conan Doyle’s place in the literary canon. Begin here for an overview of critical opinion on Conan Doyle. Authors include Dorothy L. Sayers, Andrew Lang, Arthur Morrison, and Lydia Alix Fillingham.

Rosenberg, Samuel. Naked is the Best Disguise . Indianapolis, IN, and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974.

Rosenberg’s sometimes strange study examines allegorical devices at work in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Veering close to Sherlockian writing in its tone, import, and assumptions, the work is insightful enough to have become something of a classic in Sherlock Holmes criticism.

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Arthur Conan Doyle

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“I WAS ALREADY ONE OF HIS FASCINATED READERS”

Arthur Conan Doyle came from a family justly noted for their accomplishments in the visual arts, including his grandfather John Doyle the political caricaturist, his father Charles Altamont Doyle, an illustrator and designer, and his uncles James and Richard Doyle. Their work singly and collectively has been exhibited at the British Library and the Victoria & Albert Museum in modern times. But Conan Doyle also acquired literary and historical streaks from his mother Mary Foley, an Irishwoman unusually educated for her era, and he also took an interest as a boy in literary works illustrated by his father and his uncle Richard, a co-creator of Punch.

Even as a boy, Conan Doyle had a reputation as a story-teller among his schoolmates, and he was only twenty when he sold his first story, “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” to Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal in 1879.

Conan Doyle in academic cap and gown Graduate of Edinburgh University 1881

In 1883, his story “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” in The Cornhill, then England’s leading literary periodical, made a nationwide impression upon the British reading public. The story was published without a by-line, in Cornhill’s usual practice, and the response to it was so great that some, maybe many readers took it initially as the work of the well-established Robert Louis Stevenson, instead of a newcomer. One of Conan Doyle’s writing pens can be seen below, brought to life once again from the family’s personal collection.

Famous contemporaries Conan Doyle associated with

• J.M Barrie  
• Harry Houdini  
• Rudyard Kipling  
• Robert Louis Stevenson  
• Bram Stoker  
• H.G Wells  
• Oscar Wilde  
• P.G Wodehouse  
• A.A Milne  

Landmark works written by Conan Doyle

• Micah Clarke 1889
• The Captain of the Pole-Star 1890
• The White Company 1891
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1892
• Rodney Stone 1896
• The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard 1896
• The Hound of the Baskervilles 1902
• Sir Nigel 1906
• The Lost World 1912

His first Sherlock Holmes tale, the novel A Study in Scarlet, appeared in 1887, and the second, The Sign of Four, in 1890. They did not create much stir, but in 1891 and ’92 the first Sherlock Holmes short stories appeared in the then-new Strand Magazine and became an enormous transatlantic sensation. This soon made him one of the best-known and highest-paid writers in the world. In the end, over a forty-year period, he wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

A letter from Switzerland, September 30th 1895 “ Dear Sir, Will you allow me through your columns to warn your readers against a book called "Strange Secrets," which is being sold with my name upon the cover. Out of a large number of stories, only one is mine — a very short one in the middle of the book. Yours faithfully ” A. Conan Doyle

Can Jon help to date and comment on these please?

A Study in Scarlet is the first Sherlock Holmes novel Written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in the Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887.

"Don’t tell me of luck for its judgment and pluck. And a courage that never will shirk; To give your mind to it, and know how to do it And put all your heart in your work."

But he wrote much more besides: supernatural fiction, in the era of the Victorian ghost story; historical fiction of all kinds, including his superbly humorous Brigadier Gerard stories about the Napoleonic wars; early science-fiction, in The Lost World and other tales of the turbulent Professor Challenger; and more.

A letter from London, August 23rd 1912 “ My dear Smith I got the Sherlock Holmes suggestion but not the other one. I fear I can't make anything of either of them. It's too delicate and getting too near to self advertisement. I'm glad to understand that the serial has not disappointed you. Home today. Yours very sincerely ” A. Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle Windlesham 1907

January 17th 1898 “ Dear Bram Stoker I made a little melodrama out of Sherlock Holmes and I put it in the hands of Addison Bright of 89 Comeragh Road, West Kensington, to act as my agent in the matter. I had to give him a free hand, and I understand that he has approached Mr Tree, but nothing, as far as I know, has been definitely arranged, and I have told Bright that Sir Henry had shown some interest in the idea, so if there is any hitch he will submit a copy to him. With kindest regards Yours very truly ” A. Conan Doyle

He also wrote a good deal of nonfiction as well, including histories of the Boer War, and later World War I, and spiritualist works, and in 1924 his autobiography Memories and Adventures, with a second edition in 1930, the year of his death. Nearly ninety years later, Arthur Conan Doyle continues to be one of the world’s best-known and most widely read authors.

"The little pipe which conveys a tiny rill from inexhaustible reservoirs of eternal truth."

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Books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is most famous for authoring the much loved Sherlock Holmes books .

Our recommended biography of Arthur Conan Doyle is On Conan Doyle written by Pulitzer winner Michael Dirda.

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters documents the author beyond being the creator of Holmes. “Some of that public intellectual side of Conan Doyle comes across in these letters, but they are also highly personal and reveal a really endearingly winning personality.” Michael Dirda.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

By sir arthur conan doyle.

Read expert recommendations

“I could have picked the first Sherlock Holmes collection as well. I could have picked The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is brilliant. I could’ve picked anything Sherlock Holmes. But if someone said to me, ‘You can only reread one Sherlock Holmes story’ that first story in The Return would be the one for me. It’s both a brilliant locked-room mystery and you have Holmes returning. It’s great.” Read more...

The Best Classic Crime

Stig Abell , Journalist

The Adventure of the Dancing Men

“That’s the thing about the story I love. These dancing stick men are slightly ridiculous, but it ends up so horrible. it’s a very menacing story, with quite a grounded, down-to-earth resolution. It’s short and logical and real, which is not always the case in a Conan Doyle story.” Read more...

The Best Murder Mystery Books

Stuart Turton , Novelist

The Lost World

“One of the aims of my little book On Conan Doyle is to urge people to explore Conan Doyle’s many wonderful non-Sherlockian works. Certainly the one that most people should start with is The Lost World . It introduces Professor George Edward Challenger, a self-important but wonderfully funny and committed scientist who discovers a plateau in a South American jungle where dinosaurs still roam the earth. This is based on some actual historical explorations that were going on at the time. The novel obviously inspired Jurassic Park . It is one of the great classic versions of a lost civilisation.” Read more...

The Best Sherlock Holmes Books

Michael Dirda , Journalist

The Hound of the Baskervilles

“Most people when you ask them what the best Sherlock Holmes story is will say The Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s one of the four novels featuring Holmes. Probably the best novel in my mind that he wrote, and probably the most atmospheric: the moor in Dartmoor with a convict prison nearby, and with very few potential suspects. I understand that Doyle went there on holiday and had a friend who told him the local lore about a hound from hell. The only downside to the novel is that there were so few people living there that the suspect pool was very limited.” Read more...

The Best Mystery Books

David Baldacci , Novelist

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

The Speckled Band is also a kind of gothic story. You have a wonderful villain in Dr Roylott, and you have the isolated home, the mysterious sounds and habits of the household. Most Sherlockians, if they had to pick just one story to represent the canon, would choose this one. From the interview on the best books on Sherlock Holmes

Michael Dirda, Journalist

A Study in Scarlet

“If you’ve never read any Sherlock Holmes books you really need to start with that one because it introduces this rather mysterious and romantic character. At the beginning, Doctor Watson tries to puzzle out the profession of his strange roommate at 221b Baker Street. He makes lists of what Holmes seems to know a lot about and what he doesn’t seem to know about at all – including the Copernican theory. In short, this is an introduction to a partnership and friendship that will be chronicled over 56 short stories and four novels.” Read more...

The Coming of the Fairies

“Written in 1922 by the creator of the super-logical character Sherlock Holmes, this to me is a perfect example of very bad thinking. Conan Doyle lost his son Kingsley after Kingsley returned, badly injured, from World War I. And Conan Doyle spent the rest of his life looking for some form of communication from him. He thought that he had found it through several spirit mediums, who fooled him. He was very easily fooled. He was even fooled by a couple of teenage girls who invented the story of the Cottingley fairies in 1917. I myself exchanged a long correspondence with Elsie Wright, who was the main instigator of that hoax. She never quite cracked to me – that is, she never said in so many words that it was a fake. But she did say that I was taking away the fun for people. I don’t think so. I’m just informing them. I think it was a delicious hoax.” Read more...

The best books on Being Sceptical

James Randi , Magician

The Complete Sherlock Holmes

It turns out that the brilliant British actor, Stephen Fry , is a Sherlock Holmes books fan, which means that The Complete Sherlock Holmes is also available as an audiobook. Listening to Fry’s introduction and then Conan Doyle’s stories is a wonderful experience. Our favourite story remains the incredibly scary and mysterious The Hound of the Baskervilles but apparently, according to Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda, it’s important to start with The Study in Scarlet.

Narrator: Stephen Fry

Length: 71 hours and 57 minutes

Interviews where books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were recommended

The best books on neuroscience as a career , recommended by andrew lees, an essay on a shaking palsy by james parkinson, take me home: parkinson’s, my father, myself by jonathan taylor, the naturalist on the river amazons by henry walter bates, the complete sherlock holmes by sir arthur conan doyle, naked lunch by william burroughs.

Are you considering a career in neuroscience? Neurologist Andrew Lees, one of the world’s leading authorities on Parkinson’s and author of Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment , talks about the books that continue to inspire him in his work.

The Best Sherlock Holmes Books , recommended by Michael Dirda

A study in scarlet by sir arthur conan doyle, the hound of the baskervilles by sir arthur conan doyle, the lost world by sir arthur conan doyle, arthur conan doyle by d stashower & c foley & j lellenberg.

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories and four novels starring his fictional sleuth. Michael Dirda – Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, writer and lifelong Sherlockian – gives us his personal choice of the best Sherlock Holmes books and tells us more about their creator.

The best books on The Pioneers of Criminology , recommended by Douglas Starr

Criminal investigation: a practical handbook for magistrates, police officers and lawyers by hans gross, dracula by bram stoker, the century of the detective by jürgen thorwald, the alienist by caleb carr.

Boston University professor delves into the origins of crime science, using literary and historical works to explain early forensics, phrenology and criminal psychology

The best books on Being Sceptical , recommended by James Randi

The demon-haunted world by carl sagan, the blind watchmaker by richard dawkins, in darwin’s shadow by michael shermer, in joy still felt by isaac asimov, the coming of the fairies by sir arthur conan doyle.

Former magician and internationally renowned debunker of paranormal claims James Randi sharpens his knives against proponents of flim-flam, pseudoscience and the so-called paranormal – and tells us where the creator of Sherlock Holmes went badly wrong. He selects the best books on scepticism for Five Books.

The Best Classic Crime Fiction , recommended by Sophie Roell

The moonstone by wilkie collins, the abc murders (1936) by agatha christie, brat farrar (1949) by josephine tey, the talented mr ripley by patricia highsmith.

Since the early stories of the 18th and 19th centuries, crime fiction has been an incredibly popular and enduring genre, the investigation of murder somehow capturing the imagination of millions of readers around the globe. Here, Sophie Roell, editor of Five Books, uses strict but simple criteria to pick out the best classic crime fiction, from the Victorian age through to the 1950s.

The Best Mystery Books , recommended by David Baldacci

Strangers on a train by patricia highsmith, the big sleep by raymond chandler, in cold blood by truman capote, the murder of roger ackroyd (1926) by agatha christie.

The best mystery books are completely unputdownable and addictive, the entertainment they provide more portable than watching TV and so much more satisfying than looking at your phone. Bestselling author David Baldacci, one of the masters of the genre and a passionate advocate for literacy and reading, talks us through some of the best mystery books ever written—as well as the contemporary authors he most admires.

The Best Crime Fiction , recommended by Peter James

Brighton rock by graham greene, the con man by ed mcbain, the silence of the lambs by thomas harris, the reversal by michael connelly.

The best crime novels grip you right from the first sentence and don’t let go, says bestselling crime author, Peter James. He picks his own favourite crime novels.

The Best Murder Mystery Books , recommended by Stuart Turton

The lady in the lake by raymond chandler, night watch by terry pratchett, the crow road by iain banks, a murder is announced by agatha christie, the adventure of the dancing men by sir arthur conan doyle.

The best murder mysteries set up their stories like a game between the reader and the writer, says Stuart Turton, bestselling author and lifelong mystery fan. Here he highlights five of his favourites, in which detectives make miraculous deductions, or doggedly chase clues until they meet with satisfying solutions.

The Best Classic Crime , recommended by Stig Abell

Gaudy night by dorothy l. sayers, enter a murderer by ngaio marsh, the return of sherlock holmes by sir arthur conan doyle, darker than amber by john d. macdonald, murder in mesopotamia (1936) by agatha christie.

The crime book genre is massive and caters to all sorts of tastes, but once you find a detective or main character you love, there are few pleasures greater than reading the entire series. British journalist Stig Abell, author of Death Under a Little Sky , picks some of the best classic crime, books he’s read over and over again.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A Biographical Introduction

Dr andrzej diniejko , d. litt.; contributing editor, poland.

[ Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Authors —> Arthur Conan Doyle —> Next ]

Introduction

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is known all over the world as the creator of one of the most famous fictional characters in English literature, the master detective Sherlock Holmes, but he was much more than the originator of modern detective literature. He was a man of many talents and pursuits: a medical doctor, multi-talented sportsman, prolific and excellent storyteller, keen patriot and a staunch imperialist, as well as a campaigner against miscarriages of justice.

He tried his hand in many genres of fiction and poetry. He wrote detective stories, historical and social romances, political essays and an innumerable number of letters to the press, public figures, acquaintances and friends, to his adored mother and other family members. Last but not least, he was a formidable public speaker and a dedicated Spiritualist, who investigated and popularised supernatural phenomena. A Victorian to the bone, he cherished the ideals of duty, chivalry, honour and respectability.

The origin of the surname

Doyle had an ancient Irish surname, ranking twelfth in the list of the most common surnames in Ireland. It can be derived from the Gaelic Dub-Ghaill ('dark foreigner'), the name which the Celts gave to the Vikings, who began settling in Ireland more than 1,000 years ago, or from the Anglo-Norman surname of d'Oillys, who arrived in England with William the Conqueror and then settled in Ireland.

There is a controversy about the full name of the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. He always signed himself: A. Conan Doyle. Whether Conan is a middle name or the first part of the compound surname is a matter of dispute among Doylists. The entry in the register of baptisms of St. Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh gives 'Arthur Ignatius Conan' as his Christian names, and 'Doyle' as his surname.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a child, with his father Charles Altamond (Adcock 96).

The Doyle family originated in Ireland and were dedicated Roman Catholics. Arthur Conan Doyle's grandfather, John Doyle (c. 1797-1868), a tailor, was born in Dublin into a devoutly Catholic family. All John's siblings entered Catholic religious orders, but John, who exhibited artistic talents, decided to become a painter. In 1820, he married Marianne Conan, a daughter of a Dublin's tailor. In c. 1822, John and Mary Doyle moved to London with their baby daughter and rented a house in Soho, which was inhabited by artists and writers. John wanted to become a portrait painter, but soon he gained fame as a political cartoonist under the pseudonym of HB. In 1833, he moved with his wife and children to a large house near Hyde Park at 17 Cambridge Terrace, where he subsequently entertained notable people including Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, William Makepeace Thackeray, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais, and Edwin Lanseer.

In 1832, Charles Altamont Doyle, Sir Arthur's father, was born. He grew up with one sister and three brothers. All his brothers made splendid careers: James William Edmund (1822-1892) was a historian and history illustrator; Richard (1824-1883) became a Punch cartoonist like his father; and Henry Edmund (1827-1892) became an art critic and a painter. In 1869, he was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Ireland.

Charles (1832-1893), Arthur's father, was not as successful as his elder brothers. Although he exhibited an original artistic talent, he was not able to earn a living from his paintings. At the age of 17, he moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, and got the job of a clerk in the Office of Works as an architectural draftsman. He rented lodgings in the New Town, a central area of Edinburgh, in a house owned by a Roman Catholic widow Catherine Foley. In 1855, he married his landlady's daughter, Mary Josephine (1837-1921), aged seventeen, with whom he had nine children, seven of whom survived infancy.

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh. He was baptised two days later in nearby St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church. Arthur was raised in a dysfunctional family because his father, an impecunious artist, was neurotic and could hardly support the family with a clerk's meagre salary. He developed a serious drinking problem, which eventually brought him to a mental asylum in 1881. Arthur's mother was a strong-minded Irishwoman, who traced her ancestry to the Plantagenets. She held the family together and carried the burden of running the household and raising the children. In his Memories and Adventures Conan Doyle writes that his boyhood in Edinburgh was

Spartan at home and more Spartan at the Edinburgh school where a tawse-brandishing schoolmaster of the old type made our young living miserable. From the age of seven to nine I suffered under this pock-marked one-eyed rascal who might have stepped from the pages of Dickens. [11]

Arthur's mother, who knew well contemporary English and French authors, was a masterful storyteller, and she inspired her son to take interest in history and literature. She exerted a strong influence on his future career. She told him stories of their family ancient aristocratic roots. At the age of about five Arthur wrote his first story, which had only thirty-six words. It was about a Bengal tiger and a hunter.

At the age of seven Arthur began his education at Newington Academy in Edinburgh. Then thanks to his mother and the financial help of his uncles, particularly, Michael Conan, a Paris correspondent for the Art Journal , Arthur received good education. First, he was sent for a year to Hodder, a prep school which prepared for a prestigious Jesuit school, Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, which Arthur started in autumn 1870. As Andrew Lykett writes:

Stonyurst was conservative and ultra-montane. This meant that its Rector or Head, Father Edward Ignatius Purbrick, followed a firm papal line in seeking to stem the tide of materialism in post- Darwinian Britain. [Lycett 32]

Arthur did not like the strict discipline and excessive religious instruction which the Jesuits had imposed on pupils. He was soon disillusioned with the Christian faith and when he was leaving the school he became almost an agnostic. While at Stonyhurst College, Arthur edited a school paper called Wasp and next the Stonyhurst Figaro , in which he revealed his talent as a future story writer. He also became a keen sportsman. In his later life he played cricket, rugby, football and golf, and was a cross-country skier.

After passing the London Matriculation Examination at Stonyhurst, Arthur spent a year in a Jesuit grammar school, Stella Matutina, in Feldkirch, Austria, where he was to learn German. He did not speak much German because he was surrounded by other English boys, but he discovered the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, such as “The Gold Bug” and “The Murder in the Rue Morgue,” which later exerted a great influence on his detective fiction. At Feldkirch he also edited a student paper, the Feldkirch Gazette , which carried the motto “Fear not, and put it in print.” However, when he wrote an editorial criticising the Jesuit teachers' custom of censoring the boys' letters, the paper was shut down. Arthur's uncle, Michael Conan, a famous journalist, encouraged him to write, but he did not take this idea seriously at that time. (Pascal 18)

As a young boy Arthur was an avid reader, and one of his most favourite books was Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe . His other early readings included the novels of Robert Michael Ballantyne, Mayne Reid, James Fenimore Cooper, and Jules Verne. He spent much of his spare time reading, and once he borrowed so many books from the local library that, as he recalls in Memories and Adventures , a special meeting of a library committee was held in his honour, at which a bye-law was passed that no subscriber should be permitted to change his book more than three times a day. (Pascal 13)

In 1876, Arthur Conan Doyle began to study medicine at his mother's suggestion at the University of Edinburgh, which had been one of the best medical schools at that time. He met Dr. Joseph Bell (1837-1911), the famous lecturer and an expert in the use of deductive reasoning, who inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes, and the physiologist, Professor William Rutherford (1839-1899), a model for Professor Challenger. He also studied under Sir Robert Christison (1797-1882), one of the founding fathers of modern toxicology. (Harris 449)

During his medical studies, Arthur desperately tried to earn money for his living and to support his family. 1879, he worked as a medical assistant to Doctor Hoare in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham); next he worked in Sheffield and in Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire. As a student he began writing short stories to earn some extra money. His earliest fiction, “The Haunted Grange of Goresthorphe,” was rejected by Blackwood's Magazine , but The “Mystery of the Sasassa Valley” was accepted for publication by Chambers Journal . He also published a scientific article, “Gelseminum as a Poison” in the British Medical Journal .

In 1880, Conan Doyle took a break from his studies and went on a daring six-month sea voyage to the Arctic on the whaling ship Hope. All British whale ships had to carry a surgeon, even if he was a 20 year-old medical student. During the voyage Doyle wrote a fascinating diary which was published recently. This voyage inspired him to write the story, “The Captain of the Pole Star.”

Medical profession and part-time authorship

Finally, in 1881, Conan Doyle passed qualifying examinations and settled in the Portsmouth suburb of Southsea in the next year to begin his own medical practice. As a keen sportsman, he joined the Southsea Bowling Club and the North End Cricket Club, and started playing rugby. He also joined the Literary and Scientific Society. Soon he found out that he was not satisfied with his medical career and decided to try his hand in writing fiction. From a young age he found pleasure in writing letters and articles and, finally, composing short stories.

In Southsea, Doyle, aged 23, wrote articles and short stories for London Society , All the Year Round , Temple Bar , Lancet , and The British Journal of Photography . He also wrote his first novel, The Narrative of John Smith . Its manuscript was lost in the mail on its way to the publisher. Although not good fiction, the novel provides a fascinating insight into the young writer's mind. It was published in 2011.

This early novel is about a middle-aged man who is stricken with gout and confined to his bed for a week. He attempts to write a book, and expounds his views on topics such as medicine, religion, literature and interior design. Many of the opinions reflect the author's outlook, e.g. his belief in the importance of science and medicine, and his scepticism about religious dogma.

In the 1880s Conan Doyle continued his private medical practice at Southsea, which turned out to be far from prosperous, and published fiction in various magazines. In 1886, he wrote a novella, A Study in Scarlet , which introduced the character of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Because of its brevity it was not published as a separate book, but was included in Beeton's Christmas Annual in the following year. The Annual was not very popular and Doyle decided to write historical romances instead of detective fiction.

Conan Doyle often wrote to his mother about his longing to have a wife. Eventually, in 1885, he married Louise 'Toulie' Hawkins, whom he had met while treating her terminally ill brother Jack. Surprisingly, instead of going on a honeymoon with his young wife, he went on a tour of Ireland with the Stonyhurst Wanderers, the school's old boys cricket team. Four years later Arthur and Louise had their first child, Mary, and in 1892 their second child, Arthur, known as Kingsley.

In 1890, Conan Doyle studied briefly ophthalmology in Vienna. He then visited the Hygiene Institute in Berlin, where Robert Koch's cure for tuberculosis was being tested, and reported on the cure, first in a letter to the Daily Telegraph , and next in an article “Dr Koch and his Cure,” published in the Review of the Reviews . Although he had some doubts about the curative properties of the new procedure, he was impressed by Koch himself as “a model of scientist as hero.” (Kerr 84)

After return to England, Conan Doyle moved to London with his wife and daughter to start practice as an eye specialist at 2 Upper Wimpole Street. However, as he wrote in his Memories and Adventures , “not one single patient had entered the threshold of my room.” (96) Having no patients he had plenty of time to reconsider his career, and eventually, he decided to undergo a significant metamorphosis from doctor to writer (Kerr 91). In August, Doyle decided to give up medicine and make his living as a full-time professional writer. He next moved with his family to Tennison Road in South Norwood to concentrate only on writing. He published the first six “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” in the Strand Magazine , and in 1890, the second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four , in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine . When the stories were published in book form as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), “the Baker Street mania finally swept the public. By then Conan Doyle had launched himself as a full-time professional writer.” (Dirda 12)

Life at Undershaw and Windlesham

In 1893, Louise was diagnosed with tuberculosis. During the first years of the illness, the Doyles spent much time in Switzerland, hoping that local climate would help her. While in Switzerland Conan Doyle practised winter sports and became the first British to cross the Alpine pass in snow shoes. After return from Switzerland to London, Conan Doyle met the novelist Grant Allen at luncheon, who told him that he had also suffered from consumption and that he had found the climate of Surrey beneficial for his health. Doyle rushed to Hindhead, the highest village in Surrey, with buildings at between 185 and 246 metres above sea level. He immediately bought a plot of ground, and commissioned a house to be built before leaving with his wife for Egypt in the autumn of 1895. The house, called Undershaw, which was designed for rest and recuperation of his wife, was ready in 1897.

During the years at Undershaw Conan Doyle wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles , The Return of Sherlock Holmes , The Great Boer War , Sir Nigel , and many other short stories and nonfiction writings. Louise died in 1906 at the age of 49. Shortly after the death of his wife, Conan Doyle married Jean Leckie (1872-1940), a beautiful daughter of a wealthy Scottish family, who rode horses, hunted, and had trained as a singer. (Pascal 94) She turned out to be the greatest love of his life. He had met her at a party in 1896, while Louise was still alive and fell in love at first sight. It appears that the relationship with Jean was platonic until Louise died. They were married a year later and he bought the house Windlesham, near Jean’s parents in Crowborough, Sussex. Conan Doyle had two children with his first wife: Mary Louise (1889-1976) and Kingsley (1892-1918), and three children with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart (1909-1955), Adrian Malcolm (1910-1970) and Jean Lena Annette (1912-1997).

Literary career

Conan Doyle’s literary output is prodigious. During his writing career Sir Arthur wrote twenty-one novels and over 150 short stories. He also published nonfiction, essays, articles, memoirs and three volumes of poetry. He left thousands of letters to the press, his mother (about 1500 letters), family, friends and acquaintances, including Winston Churchill, P. G. Wodehouse, Theodore Roosevelt, and Oscar Wilde. Jeffrey and Valerie Meyers, editors of The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader: From Sherlock Holmes to Spiritualism (2002) write:

He shared Dickens's sense of justice and social responsibility, his warm humanity and delight in the lively individuality of the characters he created. Like Dickens, he published his stories and novels, often in serial form, in the weekly magazines that were the staple of popular entertainment in the late nineteenth century. Like his younger contemporary and friend, H. G. Wells, he used his scientific education and medical training in his fiction and challenged the prevailing belief in the idea of progress. Like Wells, he also became an important public figure whose opinion was sought on the crucial issues of the day, an influential speaker at a time when the lecture was a popular event. [x]

The Sherlock Holmes stories

Between 1887 and 1927, Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six stories with Sherlock Holmes, a brilliant London-based “consulting detective” famous for his astute observation, deductive reasoning and forensic skills to solve difficult cases. Holmes's fictional forefather was Edgar Allan Poe's detective C. Auguste Dupin, but it was Conan Doyle who first introduced to literature the character of the scientific detective. Holmes, one of the best known and most popular characters in English literature, is not only a successful master detective, but he is the epitome of the Victorian and imperial values.

Sherlock Holmes embodies the system that he comes to protect. He is the man of reason, of science, of technology; he is from the upper class and was educated at Oxford; he eventually becomes rich; and he frequents best city clubs and other haunts of the gentleman. [Lehan 84]

The first novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson of 221B Baker Street, London, A Study in Scarlet , a tale of murder and revenge, appeared in Beaton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, and the second, The Sign of the Four , in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. After publishing the first set of Sherlock Holmes stories in the Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1893, Doyle was not particularly proud of his detective fiction. He planned to write an opera, a book of medical short stories and a Napoleonic saga. He believed that historical romances, and not his detective stories, were his most important work. (Wilson 22) In 1893, he tried to kill off Holmes at the height of his popularity by plunging him over the Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty, Holmes's greatest enemy, but in 1902 Holmes appeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles because the reading public demanded further adventures of the great detective. As a matter of fact, Doyle did not bring Holmes back to life, but told a story that had taken place before his disappearance at the Reichenbach Falls. (Redmond 24) However, there was such a great public outcry that he eventually resurrected the master detective in “The Adventure of the Empty House” in the 1903 October issue of the Strand Magazine .

Doyle created the first truly great detective in fiction and gave a great impetus to detective story as a fictional form. The tremendous popularity of Sherlock Holmes in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods can be explained by the fact that he not only embodied the late Victorian faith in the power of logic and rationality, but above all restored confidence that the British were capable to maintain law and order not only in Britain but also in the Empire at large.

The Professor Challenger stories

Although the Sherlock Holmes stories are his best fiction, Conan Doyle wrote novels and short stories in many genres. These include historical fiction, horror and suspense, psychological thriller, science fiction, poetry, and plays for the stage. In addition, Sir Arthur wrote nonfiction works on a variety of subjects: essays on literature, accounts of England’s involvement in the South African War and World War I, memoirs and diaries, writings about photography, works on the paranormal, occult and Spiritualism .

Arthur Conan Doyle is also the author of fantasy and science fiction, which includes three novels and two short stories: The Lost World (1912), The Poison Belt (1913), The Land of Mist (1926), “The Disintegration Machine” (1928), and “When the World Screamed” (1929). The Lost World introduced his second most famous character, Professor George Edward Challenger, who guides an expedition deep into an isolated plateau in the South American jungle where some prehistoric animals (dinosaurs) and indigenous race of ape-like people still live. Challenger, a scientist of enormous intellect and adventurer, was designed to be a character to rival Holmes. The Poison Belt is an apocalyptic novel that features the same characters who appear in The Lost World . Astronomers discover that the Earth is about to be engulfed in a belt of poisonous gas “ether” from outer space. Prior to (apparently) extinguishing all life on the planet, the belt causes a mysterious outbreak of illness whose symptoms are irritability, loss of inhibition, coma, and (pseudo) death. (Harris 453) In The Land of Mist (1926) Professor Challenger is converted to Spiritualism.

The Challenger stories, which recall Jules Verne’s science fiction, are less popular of Doyle's fictions than the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, they contain interesting narrative structure and their themes concern imperialism, positivist science, the male role, evolution, degeneration theory and atavism. (Christensen 121)

Historical romances

Arthur Conan Doyle wrote several popular works of historical fiction. The first was Micah Clarke (1889), which is set in the seventeenth century during the Monmouth Rebellion. The White Company (1891) recounts the history of a company of medieval English archers during the Hundred Years' War, in the years 1366 and 1367. In 1906, Doyle published its prequel, Sir Nigel , which is set in the early phase of the Hundred Years' War. Doyle also wrote a series of short stories about a Napoleonic hussar named Etienne Gerard, which were first published in magazines and eventually in book form: The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896) and Adventures of Gerard (1903). They are “brilliant evocations of the Napoleonic ethos.” (Dirda 73) Earlier in 1892, he published The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales . It should be noted that Conan Doyle was often disappointed at being famous chiefly for the creation of the Sherlock Holmes character. He had a much higher esteem of his historical novels than the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote nonfiction. In 1907, he published Through the Magic Door , a long essay about the charisma and charm of books. He also wrote several books dealing with public topics, such as The Crime of the Congo (1910). He also published A History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders ( 6 vols., 1916-1920), and A Visit to Three Fronts (1916). In 1914, Doyle wrote several pamphlets about the war. In 1924, Doyle published his excellent autobiography, Mysteries and Adventures , which recounts his life from early childhood, education, voyages as a ship's doctor, medical practice in Southsea, his literary endeavours, experiences from the Boer war, legal and political campaigns, interests in sports, and commitment to spiritualism.

In 1900, Doyle served in the Boer War as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June. After return home he wrote a lengthy book, The Great Boer War , which sought to justify the British cause and to emphasise the great need for army reform and modernisation. The book was hailed in the press for its accuracy and fairness. (Pascal 99) In 1902, Doyle received his knighthood from the British Crown for a pamphlet, The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct , in which he defended England's position in the Boer War in South Africa and for his service to the nation. He was reluctant to accept the title, but his mother talked him into it. (Pascal 103) There is also a theory that king Edward VII, who was an avid reader of Sherlock Holmes stories, knighted him to encourage him to write more stories about the 'master' detective'.

Interest in spiritualism

Arthur Conan Doyle became interested in the paranormal in the late 1880s and studied it for the rest of his life. In the last quarter of his life, he abandoned literary career and devoted himself to spreading the spiritualist message throughout the world. He lectured on spiritualism in Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa, and the United States, during which he covered 55,000 miles and addressed a quarter of a million people. In 1926, he published The History of Spiritualism in two volumes at his own expense.

Other accomplishments

Sir Arthur was a large, vigorous, active man, with all of the Englishman's traditional fondness for sports. Throughout all his adult life he wore the “walrus” moustache of the late Victorian era. He was an outstanding sportsman; he played football, and billiards. While living in Southsea he was a goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club. He was also a keen cricketeer. “For many years Conan Doyle even belonged to a rather literary cricket team called the Allahakbarries, its name punningly combining the Arabic formula praising God with a nod to the team’s captain J. M. Barrie (creator of Peter Pan).” (Dirda 13) Between 1899 and 1907, he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club. He also practised boxing and was a pioneer motorist and a rally-driver. In the 1890s, he started ski-touring to Switzerland. He was an occasional bowler and keen golfer. In 1910, he was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club, East Sussex.

Conan Doyle was always a partisan of the underdog. He campaigned successfully against miscarriages of justice. He conducted a long campaign to defend the half-British and half-Indian solicitor George Edaljii, who had been accused of mutilating animals. Julian Barnes' novel, Arthur and George (2005) recounts this episode in his life. Conan Doyle also campaigned for the release of Oscar Slater, a German Jew born in Upper Silesia, who was accused of murdering an old woman in Glasgow. Doyle exposed inconsistencies in the police investigation and Slater was finally freed.

Conan Doyle was also an early champion of building the Channel Tunnel, which, he believed, was necessary, “for the deployment of troops and armaments in France in an anticipation a German war.” (Wynne 21) For his various accomplishments he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university of Edinburgh in 1905, and was a knight of grace of the order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Death and legacy

Towards the end of his life Sir Arthur suffered angina which he contracted during his exhausting world tours. He died of heart failure on July 7, 1930, in Crowborough, East Sussex, leaving his widow Jean, their three children, Dennis, Adrian and Jean, and his daughter Mary, by his first wife. His eldest son, Kingsley, who served in World War One, was seriously wounded at the 1916 Battle of the Somme; later he developed pneumonia which he contracted during his convalescence and died in 1918 aged 25.

The last words of Conan Doyle were addressed to his wife. He whispered smiling to her: “You are wonderful.” (Davis xvi) He was 71 years old. Sir Arthur and his second wife are buried at the New Forest Church of All Saints, Minstead. Legend has it that as a devoted spiritualist, he was first buried in an upright position in the garden of his home at Crowborough. The house in Crowborough was sold, but the graves remained until 1955, when the Doyle family decided to fulfil Lady Jean's original wish that they be buried together at All Saints. The remains of Sir Arthur and Lady Jean were exhumed from the garden and reinterred in the churchyard. After a short private ceremony the couple were laid horizontally to rest. The epitaph on the gravestone in the churchyard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire, reads: “Steel True, Blade Straight, Arthur Conan Doyle, Knight, Patriot, Physician & Man of Letters.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a versatile and complex personality; he was physician by education, keen sportsman, war correspondent, campaigner for social justice, creator of the world's most famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, author of historical and social novels, and active Spiritualist. As Douglas Kerr has written in his recent book: “Arthur Conan Doyle was, arguably, Britain's last national writer.” (13) An Irish by ancestry, Scottish by birth and upbringing, and British by choice, devoted to Crown and Empire, he still remains one of the most popular British authors and a national icon.

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Biography Online

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Biography

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) – Scottish writer, physician and spiritualist – best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories.

After his father’s death, the burden of supporting a large family fell on Arthur Conan Doyle. To supplement his income he began writing short stories. His first story of note was A Study in Scarlet published in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual 1887 (featuring the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes. This later led to a contract writing more Sherlock Holmes stories for the Strand magazine. It was in these early stories that he developed the character of Sherlock Holmes. It was a character that fascinated the reading public and he soon became one of the best-loved fictional characters. Sherlock Holmes always had an element of mystery – the sharpest mind and his unbelievable powers of observation.

“…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth…”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes)

Sherlock Holmes also had his share of human weaknesses such as smoking and drug addiction. His partner, the sensible, loyal Watson proved the ideal counterbalance to the highly strung genius of Holmes.

The success of Sherlock Holmes enabled Conan Doyle to retire from his medical profession and become a full-time writer. But, it was not the popular Sherlock Holmes stories which inspired him the most. He was more interested in writing serious historical novels and becoming known as a famous writer in this genre. However, his historical novels never brought him the same financial remuneration or fame as his Sherlock Holmes stories did.

After a while, Doyle became increasingly frustrated with the public’s obsession with Holmes, at a time when he was growing weary of the stories. Therefore, he decided to retire Holmes in 1893 by having him plunge into a ravine with his arch-enemy Professor Moriarty. Holmes hoped this would give him more time to write his ‘serious novels’ – but, much to his frustration, he struggled to escape the public’s perception of him as the creator of Holmes. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for members of the public to equate Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes – much to his annoyance.

In 1900, Conan Doyle served in a field hospital in the Boer war. He also later published a pamphlet The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct , which sought to justify British actions in the unpopular Boer war. For his services in the war, he was knighted, though undoubtedly his fame as the creator of Sherlock Holmes was also a factor.

In, 1906, his first wife, Louisa Hawkins, died after a long battle with Tuberculosis. It was a big blow to Conan Doyle who had moved to Switzerland to help her health.

After getting married to his second wife, Denise Steward a year later, he again was in the need for more money to finance a lavish new family home. Again, Doyle turned to his ever-profitable Holmes, securing a great deal with an American publisher for more Holmes stories. Thus, Holmes was resurrected, Conan Doyle cleverly wrote that Holmes had never died in the fall but cunningly escaped Moriarty and had gone into hiding from his enemies.

Conan Doyle’s most famous character was a man of great reason and science, so it was perhaps ironical that Conan Doyle was to become greatly interested in the new religion of spiritualism. A large part of spiritualism was the contacting of deceased relatives through seances. For many years, Conan Doyle had toyed with the ideas, but the traumatic years of the First World War (where he lost a brother and son) changed his outlook to that of a fervent believer. Conan Doyle became one of the chief proponents and public faces for spiritualism. Conan Doyle felt that this proof of life beyond death could give fresh impetus to religion.

“Religions are mostly petrified and decayed, overgrown with forms and choked with mysteries. We can prove that there is no need for this. All that is essential is both very simple and very sure.” ( The New Revelation 1918)

The success of Conan Doyle’s Holmes enabled him to pursue many different interests. As well, as researching spiritualism, Conan Doyle found time to fight miscarriages of justice such as the George Edalji case.

“I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage, we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one’s weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.”

Arthur Conan Doyle, Stark Munro Letters (1894)

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net.  Published 25th June 2009. Last updated 15 February 2018.

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Arthur's parents, Mary Foley Doyle and Charles Altamont Doyle, had moved to Scotland from London, hoping that Charles could advance his career in architecture. Having inherited some measure of his family's artistic talent, Charles began with every hope of success, but never realized his dreams. Plagued by depression and alcoholism, Charles was a distant father and husband, becoming so detached from reality that he ended life in an asylum. With considerable charity, his son Arthur later said of him, "My father's life was full of the tragedy of unfulfilled powers and of underdeveloped gifts."

By this time, Charles Doyle had lost his job, and the family had difficulty paying the school fees. A lodger named Bryan Charles Waller became the family's protector, eventually supporting Mary, Charles, and their children completely.

Once at university, Conan Doyle found the work difficult and boring. He gained more amusement from playing sports, at which he excelled, than in listening to lectures in large, crowded lecture halls. More interesting than studying was describing his instructors' eccentric personalities. Among his teachers was the man Conan Doyle later acknowledged as his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Joseph Bell. Dr. Bell taught his students the importance of observation, using all the senses to obtain an accurate diagnosis. He enjoyed impressing students by guessing a person's profession from a few indications, through a combination of deductive and inductive reasoning, like Holmes. Although Bell's methods fascinated Conan Doyle, his cold indifference towards his patients repelled the young medical student. Some of this coldness found its way into Sherlock Holmes's character, especially in the early stories.

In 1886, Doyle finished the first Sherlock Holmes novella, A Study in Scarlet . After several rejections, he was forced to sell it outright for £25 for inclusion in the 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual, a holiday collection that often sold out, but did not usually attract much attention in the national press. The work was reprinted in 1889 and many more times, but Conan Doyle never earned another penny from it. Sign of the Four , the second work to feature Holmes and Watson, also achieved a small, but by no means brilliant, success.

While writing the early Holmes stories, Doyle also began what he considered his most important work: chivalric, historical novels based on British history, primarily, Micah Clark, Sir Nigel, and The White Company . Although these novels were widely admired, none of them created the stir caused by the first series of short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that appeared in The Strand Magazine , starting in 1891. Despite their overwhelming success, Conan Doyle never suspected that these stories would be the foundation of his literary legacy.

After writing three series of twelve Holmes stories, receiving the unheard-of sum of £1000 for the last dozen, Conan Doyle was sick to death of the popular detective and decided to kill him off in the 1893 story, "The Final Problem." Conan Doyle considered the Holmes stories light fiction, good for earning money, but destined to be quickly forgotten, the literary equivalent of junk food. "I couldn't revive him if I would, at least not for years," he wrote to a friend who urged Holmes's resurrection, "for I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras , of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day." The vehement public reaction to Holmes's death must have shocked Conan Doyle. People wore black armbands and wrote him pleading--or threatening--letters. Still, it was nine years before he capitulated to public opinion and brought Holmes back. The third Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles , appeared in nine parts in The Strand Magazine during 1901-2, but it was presented as an old case from Watson's records, completed before Holmes's death. Conan Doyle did not make up his mind to resurrect Holmes until 1903, when he wrote "The Empty House." He continued, reluctantly, to produce Holmes stories until 1927, three years before his own death. Conan Doyle became an important public figure, twice standing (unsuccessfully) for Parliament. He was knighted for his efforts on behalf of the Boer War, both as the author of a persuasive, pro-war book and as a volunteer, caring for wounded British soldiers in the field. He even took on several real-life mysteries, using Holmes's methods and his own status as a famous author to free two unjustly imprisoned men. The First World War tore apart Conan Doyle's familiar world. Like so many others, he lost close family members to the conflict. Conan Doyle's brother-in-law and nephew died in combat, while the influenza pandemic took his brother Innes and his eldest son Kingsley, weakened by war wounds. During the war, he managed to have himself appointed as an observer for the Foreign Office, but he was kept away from the horrors of the western front for fear that he might reveal to the public things that the military would rather have kept quiet. Even Sherlock Holmes served England in the war. In the story that Conan Doyle intended to be the last Holmes outing, His Last Bow , published in 1916, Holmes outwits a German spy. Conan Doyle found a refuge from the horrors of the war, and he clung to it tenaciously. Starting in 1916, he publicly declared himself a spiritualist, and over the next few years he made spiritualism the center of his life, writing on the subject and traveling all over the world to advocate his beliefs. Never afraid to take an unpopular stand, Conan Doyle wrote a book in 1922 called The Coming of the Fairies , in which he defended the veracity of two young girls who claimed to have photographed each other playing with actual fairies and goblins.

Towards the end of their lives, long after Conan Doyle's death, the aged "girls" admitted to having used paper cutouts as stand-ins for the fairies. Interestingly, Conan Doyle's own Uncle Richard had invented, in his book illustrations, the typical representation of a fairy as a little girl with dragonfly wings and a gossamer gown. No matter how many times Conan Doyle was tricked by mediums later proven to be dishonest, he continued to believe in spiritualism. The famous American magician Harry Houdini made a project of trying to convince Conan Doyle of his error, but all he managed to do was ruin their friendship. Houdini saw spiritualism as cruel because it gave people false hope; Conan Doyle, who was already suffering from serious heart disease, wanted to believe that death was a grand new adventure. He fought his infirmity, trying to continue writing and traveling as before. He died at the age of 71, secure in his spiritualist beliefs.

Doctor, writer, believer in the supernatural--Conan Doyle's personality encompassed all these traits that contributed to the Sherlock Holmes stories we love to read today. Conan Doyle's fanciful imagination, combined with his scientific training, created ideas that have helped to shape the modern mystery and science fiction genres. One of the first to anticipate the dangers of submarines in warfare, he wrote a Sherlock Holmes story on the subject. His novel The Lost World is the ancestor of Jurassic Park and countless other films. Another of his stories, "The Ring of Thoth," was probably the plot source of the 1932 film The Mummy with Boris Karloff. An 1883 medical article called "Life and Death in the Blood," outlining the imaginary voyage of a microscopic observer through the human body, anticipated the main idea behind the film Fantastic Voyage . Conan Doyle's most long-lived idea, however, was Sherlock Holmes himself, who has continued to evolve in our time through the works of other writers and filmmakers, taking forms even his creator could never have imagined.

Conan Doyle wrote the Holmes stories quickly, never imagining that they would receive much scrutiny. If he forgot a date or fact from a previous story, he forged ahead without looking it up. This bad habit has resulted in some startling discrepancies. Was Watson wounded in the leg or the arm? How could Watson's deceased wife be on a visit to her mother's? Is Watson's given name "James" or "John"? To correct these and other inconsistencies, Sherlockians comb the "canon," or "sacred writings," for clues, seek secondary sources (inventing some themselves when all else fails), and write "scholarly" articles, using Holmes's methods to solve contradictions in the works or following clues to add new "facts" to Holmes's and Watson's biographies.

One favorite Sherlockian controversy centers on the "original" location of 221b Baker Street, a non-existent address in Conan Doyle's time. When Baker Street was renumbered during the 1920s, 221b was created on the block formerly called Upper Baker Street. Many faithful representations of the sitting room at 221b Baker Street have been constructed throughout the world. All contain the violin, the tobacco-holding Persian slipper, and other Holmesian accouterments mentioned in the stories.

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Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 - 7 July 1930). M.D., Kt, KStJ, D.L., LL.D. , Writer, Sportsman, Artist, Poet, Politician, Business man, Justicer, Inventor, Patriot, Spiritualist...

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The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography Hardcover – December 9, 2008

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Arthur Conan Doyle Books In Order

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Arthur Conan Doyle or Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (May 1859 – July 1930) was a Scottish writer and physician, known as one of the greatest writers of crime fiction and particularly renowned for his Sherlock Holmes series. He attended a Roman Catholic Jesuit school in Hodder Place, Stonyhurst and went on to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1876 to 1881, where he started writing stories in his free time. Conan Doyle first published a story in a journal when he was 19.

Following his graduation, he sported a brief run as a ship doctor on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. The first Sherlock Holmes story he wrote, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887, and while his medicine career didn’t go all as planned – Conan Doyle himself writes in his autobiography that no single patient crossed the door of his ophthalmology practice, – he quickly garnered the renown and praise of readers and critics alike for his Holmes stories. His Sherlock Holmes oeuvre spans 56 short stories and 4 novels that focus on the life and adventures of the most famous resident of Baker’s Street. His other works take on different themes, including historical works on the Boer war and even esoteric books on spiritualism.

Bits of a Formidable Character

Arthur Conan Doyle can with today’s eyes be seen as a man of strong moral composition and endless fortitude. He fathered five children to two wives, but while being in love with his second wife, Jean Elizabeth Leckie, their relationship was purely platonic until his first wife, Louise Hawkins, died of tuberculosis. His religious views were controversial, him declaring himself as an agnostic despite his Catholic upbringing. Conan Doyle’s last words were directed to his wife, and are said to be: “You are wonderful.” His epitaph reads: “Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, physician & man of letters.”

The Inception of a Great Series

As mentioned earlier, the Sherlock Holmes series started in 1887 with the publication of A Study in Scarlet. Holmes’ character was partially modelled on his university teacher Joseph Bell, whom he cites as an inspiration for the deduction, inference and observation skills he transferred to Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Scarlet has Dr. Watson as the narrator and tells briefly of how he came to know Sherlock Holmes. The crime mystery starts off in a rural mansion. A man is murdered and after not too long Holmes comes to arrest the perpetrator, using his ties with a group of homeless people. The story doesn’t end here, however.

The reader is honestly unable to guess the murderer as sufficient clues are lacking (this is characteristic during the inchoate stages of crime fiction) in A Study in Scarlet. The murderer, Jefferson Hope now takes the reins and explains of the sordid past of the man he murdered, taking the reader to North America and showing perhaps the position of Arthur Conan Doyle himself in the matter of the up-and-coming Mormonism in the United States.

The Final Problem or How Sherlock Holmes Returned

It seems that Conan Doyle always saw medicine as the nobler task to undertake as opposed to writing, and thus he sought to end the series after finishing another novel, The Sign of the Four. Thus in December 1893 Conan Doyle had decided to kill off Sherlock Holmes to allow him focus on medicine more. He had Sherlock Holmes and his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty pitted in a short story, The Final Problem. Here Sherlock Holmes has at last found his intellectual equal in the criminal mastermind of Professor Moriarty, and has to play a hide-and-seek game with the Professor for most of the story, taking a train to continental Europe and finally having a mortal struggle in the Swiss Reichenbach Falls, both evidently falling to their deaths into a gorge.

The public was less than pleased with how Conan Doyle treated Holmes, prompting him to write a prequel’ named The Hound of the Baskervilles, which was published from August 1901 to April 1902 in The Strand Magazine. Incidentally, this is one of the most praised Holmes stories penned by the author. The episode about Conan Doyle killing off Holmes only to bring him back again – which he did indeed do after The Hound of the Baskervilles – seems to tell about a passionate relationship between the author and the character, as Conan Doyle evidently couldn’t keep from returning back to Sherlock Holmes.

The Legacy of Sherlock Holmes

The Sherlock Holmes series is reputed to be one of the main reasons behind the wave of crime fiction and has inspired generations of authors not only from the genre. More contemporary readers of this short overview will, however, appreciate a short list of the most recent TV shows and movies about Sherlock Holmes, as obviously listing them all – even the full-length movies – is a task a doorstopper could perhaps accomplish only partially.

The most recent series inspired by Sherlock Holmes is the British crime drama titled Sherlock. Books from the Holmes canon are used by the producers to create modern-day versions of Conan Doyle’s novels, and six 90-minute episodes have aired so far. The series are immensely popular in the United Kingdom, and have been sold to over 180 territories overall. There have been USSR adaptations as well, releasing five hugely popular films on Soviet television, with one of the actors later receiving an Order of the British Empire.

Some Sherlock Holmes movies have also been produced quite recently. Of these notable are 2009’s Sherlock Holmes and its 2011 sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, both starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Numerous Holmes-related video games, table games and role playing games have also been released. Of course this is but a small list – the actual influence of the Sherlock Holmes series would be hard to measure. Remember the House M.D. series? House was definitely a Holmesian figure. What’s more, countless radio plays,movies – both preserved and lost – as well as books and actual people have been influenced by the splendid character created by perhaps the one most important crime fiction writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

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