Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A Biographical Introduction Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A Biographical Introduction [ 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. Ancestors 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.

Childhood 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. Education 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. Nonfiction 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. Knighthood 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.” Conclusion 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.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle :The Doctor Behind The Detective - Central Square Theater Central Square Theater Artists & Audiences Creating Theater Vital to Our Communities Primary Menu Sir Arthur Conan Doyle :The Doctor Behind The Detective Sir Arthur Conan Doyle :The Doctor Behind The Detective Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, creator of the most famous detective in English literature, was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was a chronic alcoholic, while his mother, Mary, passed her gift for storytelling to her son. Arthur recalled his mother’s habit of “sinking her voice to a horror-stricken whisper” as she reached the climax of a tale. Her stories overshadowed the hardships of a home with little money and an erratic father. “In my early childhood, as far as I can remember anything at all,” Arthur said, “the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life.” Any innocence that was salvaged from that childhood ended during Arthur’s early education.

Beginning at age nine, wealthier Doyle family members paid his way through the Jesuit boarding school Hodder Place, where he spent seven unhappy years in Stonyhurst, England, plagued by bigotry in academic subjects and the brutal corporal punishment common to such schools of the period. His only relief came in corresponding with his mother and practicing sports, mainly cricket, at which he excelled. He also discovered his own aptitude for storytelling during these years, drawing upon his innate sense of humor to delight younger students, who would crowd around to listen. After graduating in 1876, Arthur returned to Scotland, determined not to follow in his father’s footsteps. “Perhaps it was good for me that the times were hard, for I was wild, full blooded and a trifle reckless. But the situation called for energy and application so that one was bound to try to meet it. My mother had been so splendid that I could not fail her,” he wrote years later. The first necessary action was to co-sign the committal papers of his father, who was by then seriously demented, to a lunatic asylum.

Aside from Charles, the Doyle family held a prominent position in the world of art, and it would have been natural for Arthur to have immediately carried on in that tradition. But he chose medicine instead, attending the University of Edinburgh to complete his training. At the university he met several fellow students who would later become major British authors, including James Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson. But the man with the greatest influence over seventeen-year-old Arthur was a teacher, Dr. Joseph Bell, who ultimately inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes. One can clearly see the qualities Arthur most admired in Dr. Bell in the detective. “It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes,” he wrote the doctor. “…[R]ound the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man.” Holmes would not appear for several years, but it was during medical school that Arthur began to write short stories. The first piece, The Mystery of Sasassa Valley, was reminiscent of his favorite authors, Edgar Alan Poe and Bret Harte, and was accepted for publication in Chamber’s Journal, an Edinburgh magazine. The next story, The American Tale, was published the same year in London Society.

“It was in this year,” he wrote later, “that I first learned that shillings might be earned in other ways than by filling phials.” At the age of twenty and in his third year of medical school, Arthur boarded the whaling boat Hope as the ship’s surgeon, traveling to the shores of Greenland for the crew’s seal and whale hunts. “I went on board the whaler a big straggling youth. I came off a powerful well-grown man,” he reflected. The trip had “awakened the soul of a born wanderer.” He returned to school in 1880, and while he struggled with his medical studies after his Arctic adventure, he nevertheless completed his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree a year later, officially becoming Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle. The new doctor opened his first private practice in Portsmouth. Although it is said he only had £10 to his name when he began, by the end of three years he was starting to make a living for himself. In 1885 he married Louisa Hawkins, a “gentle and amiable” young woman. In the midst of his medical practice and new marriage, he also spent time developing his writing career.

In 1886 he began A Tangled Skein, a novel featuring characters named Sheridan Hope and Ormond Stacker. When it was published two years later in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, he had changed the title to A Study in Scarlet and now introduced readers to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Sherlock Holmes quickly became world famous, and so began a dichotomy in Conan Doyle’s life. He struggled between the commercial success of the Holmes stories and his preference for writing historical novels, poems, and plays, which he believed would bring him recognition as a serious author. Another disparity arose between Conan Doyle’s brilliant use of logic and deduction, on one hand, and his fascination with the paranormal and spiritualism, a practice to which he became devoted later in life, on the other. By the late 1880s, Conan Doyle was better known in the United States than in England. But in 1889 the publisher of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in Philadelphia came to London to create a British edition of the magazine. He arranged a dinner with Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde. The two writers got along famously.

(“It was indeed a golden evening for me,” Conan Doyle wrote), and the publisher commissioned a short novel from Conan Doyle, which was published in 1890 in both England and the U.S. This story, The Sign of Four, played a significant role in elevating the profile of Sherlock Holmes and his creator in literary history. In order to write The Sign of the Four, however, the young author had to put aside an historical novel on which he had been working, The White Company. As this was the type of literature he most enjoyed writing, he felt he would never find as much satisfaction in or accomplishment in the Holmes series. “I was young and full of the first joy of life and action,” he remarked about writing The White Company, “and I think I got some of it into my pages. When I wrote the last line, I remember that I cried: ‘Well, I’ll never beat that’ and threw the inky pen at the opposite wall.” After a brief move to Austria, Conan Doyle relocated to London, opening an ophthalmology practice in Upper Wimpole Street. Lacking any patients, however, he had plenty of time to contemplate the next step in his career.

He decided to write a series of short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes. It turned out to be the most profitable decision of his life. His agent made a deal with The Strand Magazine to publish the stories, and the visual likeness of Holmes was immortalized by illustrator Sidney Paget, who used his brother Walter as a model. The artistic collaboration between Conan Doyle and Paget would last for many decades, branding both the persona and the image of Sherlock Holmes worldwide. Conan Doyle’s medical career came to an end after a near-death bout of influenza in 1891, which helped to clarify his priorities. “With a rush of joy” he chose to step away from his medical career. “I remember in my delight taking the handkerchief which lay upon the coverlet in my enfeebled hand, and tossing it up to the ceiling in my exultation,” he recalled. “I should at last be my own master.” Being his own master, however, involved making artistic choices that did not always meet with public approval. Conan Doyle felt burdened by Sherlock Holmes. In November 1891 he wrote to his mother, “I think of slaying Holmes…and winding him up for good and all.

He takes my mind from better things.” In December 1893 he did the deed, killing off Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem by sending the detective and his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, plummeting to their deaths at the Reichenbach Falls. The author was now free of the character that had eclipsed what he considered his better work. But his mother had warned him, “You may do what you deem fit, but the crowds will not take this lightheartedly,” and indeed, twenty thousand readers expressed their disapproval by cancelling their subscriptions to The Strand Magazine. The Hound of Baskervilles , serialized in The Strand Magazine beginning in 1901, was inspired by a stay on the Devonshire moors in southwest England. The real-life Fox Tor Mires were supposedly the inspiration for the novel’s great Grimpen Mire, the prison at Dartmoor contributed to the idea of an escaped convict – Slasher Seldon – on the loose, and folklore lent the spectral hound to the story. At some point, however, Conan Doyle realized his tale lacked a hero.

He’s quoted as having said, “Why should I invent such a character, when I already have him in the form of Sherlock Holmes?” Since he had killed off Sherlock in The Final Problem, he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles as if it was a previously untold Holmes caper. In subsequent Holmes stories Conan Doyle brought the detective back, explaining that he had not actually died along with Professor Moriarty but had arranged to be temporarily “dead” to evade his other dangerous enemies. In his personal life, Conan Doyle was dealing with weighty issues. Louisa had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in the 1890s. The prognosis was dire, but Conan Doyle was able to nurse her years beyond her doctors’ expectations. He also, however, fell in love with another woman during that time. When Louisa died in his arms in 1906, he had been involved in a clandestine, although platonic, courtship with Jean Elizabeth Leckie for nine years. Conan Doyle fought a deep depression for several months after Louisa’s death, but roused himself by helping to exonerate a young man who had been accused of vicious crimes that the former doctor realized the man wasn’t capable of committing.

The next year, Jean Leckie became Lady Conan Doyle. The young man was the first of several individuals on whose behalf Conan Doyle intervened in the courts. He was deeply committed to justice and public service and used his instincts and training to further those causes. Turned down for military service in both the Boer War and World War I due to his age, he nevertheless volunteered as a medical doctor in South Africa during the Boer War. In 1902 he was knighted by King Edward VII for his service to the Crown. He also twice ran for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist, earning respectable votes but neither time winning the election. Conan Doyle had five children – a daughter and a son with Louisa and two sons and a daughter with Jean – and lost five men in his family – his first son, brother, two brothers-in-law, and two nephews – in World War I. After his marriage to Jean, the pace of his writing subsided considerably. He did, however, give playwriting further attention. 1912’s The Speckled Band, was based on a well-known Holmes story. It proved both a critical and commercial success on the stage, unlike some of his earlier plays.

Before too long, though, Conan Doyle decided to retire from theatrical work, “Not because it doesn’t interest me, but because it interests me too much.” He may be best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, but Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger series, which began with The Lost World in 1912, was also highly successful and made a profound mark on the as-yet-unnamed “science fiction” genre. Increasingly, the celebrated author retreated into this world of science fiction, and also into spiritualism. He and his family traveled to three continents on psychic crusades. He spent over £250,000 on his religious pursuits and wrote primarily about spiritualism for a period, until the financial toll drove him back to writing fiction. First came three more Professor Challenger books, followed by a compilation of Sherlock Holmes adventures in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes in 1927. Near the end of his life, Conan Doyle was diagnosed with angina pectoris, commonly caused by coronary heart disease. Pushing himself to the end, he took one final psychic tour of northern Europe in late 1929, after which he was bedridden for the rest of his days.

He died on July 7, 1930, surrounded by his family, whispering his last words to Jean: “You are wonderful.” The epitaph on his 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.” A statue honors him in Crowborough, East Sussex, England. And back in Edinburgh, close to the house in which the beloved writer was born, stands a statue of Sherlock Holmes. Compiled by Alison R Klejna . Information sourced from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Biography at SherlockHolmesOnline.org and the Arthur Conan Doyle entry on Wikipedia.org. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Literary Career Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Literary Career [ Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Authors —> Arthur Conan Doyle —> Biographical Materials —> Next ] rthur 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 span class ="book">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. Nonfiction 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. Knighthood 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.” Conclusion 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. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:Biography - The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:Biography Young Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 may 1859, at Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. His mother, Mary Foley, was Irish and descendant of the famous Percy family of Northumberland, in the line of Plantagenet.

His father, Charles Altamont Doyle , was a not very ambitious officer with some artistic talent [1] . When he lost his job, he sank into alcoholism and was interned after severe seizures before dying in 1893. The three brothers of his father distinguished themselves in England: James wrote The Chronicles of England, Henry was director of the National Gallery in Dublin and Richard was one of the most famous illustrators of Punch . Arthur is the second of seven children (Annette Constance, Caroline, Innes, Ida and Julia). His education begins at home and in a small Edinburgh school. At nine, he entered the Jesuit college Hodder in Lancashire to prepare his admission to the Stonyhurst College. He succeeded two years later and already starting to get excited about literature : Walter Scott, Jules Verne or Macaulay. He even founded a little magazine : The Stonyhurst Figaro . However, Jesuit education hardly suited him and when he left school in 1875, he completely rejected Christianity, preferring to be agnostic. Nevertheless, he spent an additional year at a Jesuit college in Feldkirch, Austria, to improve his German.

In 1876, he began his medical studies at the Faculty of Edinburgh. Dr. Joseph Bell There he met two men who influence the choice of his future novel hero: Professor Rutherford, whose Assyrian beard, booming voice and broad chest, inspire him Professor George Edward Challenger [2] and Dr. Joseph Bell , Professor of Surgery, whose amazing deductions on his patients and their diseases did germinate the idea of a detective using the same methods. Alongside his studies, Arthur tries to win some money to help her family. He worked as medical assistant in Sheffield, Birmingham and Shropshire and doctor aboard a whaling in Greenland. In 1879, two of his short stories are published anonymously ( The Mystery of Sasassa Valley and The American's Tale ). 22 october 1881, he graduated and enlisted as a doctor aboard a steamer to Western Africa. The voyage which proves unpleasant because of a storm and a fire on board, Conan Doyle became seriously ill (probably malaria) in Lagos. He decides to exercise his talents more peacefully. After a brief partnership in 1882, with a crooked colleague, he opened a practice of ophthalmology in Southsea, near Portsmouth.

His clientele leaves him plenty of time to read, write and try to publish other short stories but without success. Louisa Hawkins In august 1885, he married Louisa Hawkins ("Touie"), the sister of one of his rare patients. She gave him two children ( Mary Louise and Kingsley ) and strongly encouraged him to persevere in literature. He followed his advice because in 1886 he finished his first novel The Firm of Girdlestone , but failed to find a publisher (it will be serialized in 1889-1890 in People magazine). Beeton's Christmas Annual (1887) In 1887, he wrote his first Sherlock Holmes adventure, A Study in Scarlet . The manuscript was rejected by several publishers before Ward, Lock & Co. bought it for the paltry sum of £25. They published it in their Beeton's Christmas Annual in november 1887 and was completely unnoticed. But the young author, disciple of Walter Scott, is already working on historical novels (the kind he considered the only worthy of his vocation) like Micah Clarke (published in 1889).

Having some success, he devours the chroniclers of the Middle Ages as Froissart and Philippe Commynes. As a result, he wrote The White Company (published in 1891). With this latest novel, which is a somewhat idealized description of English chivalry, Conan Doyle was proud to give England a second Ivanhoe. Lippincott's Magazine (1890) In august 1889, during a dinner hosted by J. M. Stoddart, an American agent of the Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde are hired to write two stories. Published in 1890, Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray and Conan Doyle The Sign of Four, the second adventure of the detective. The same year, the Conan Doyles stayed a few months in Vienna for Arthur to improve his medical knowledge. Back in England, they moved to London on Montague Place and the young doctor's office opens at 2 Devonshire Place. Patients are still scarce, Conan Doyle took up the pen again.

The Strand Magazine In january 1891, discovering the first issue of The Strand Magazine , he decided to write and propose new adventures of the detective, including A Scandal in Bohemia and The Red-Headed League . He then provided five other short stories and renewed his contract for six additional stories at the rate of one per month [3] . The success was stunning. He abandoned medicine and devoted himself entirely to writing. Nevertheless, he wanted his name remain associated with more literary works and in november 1891 he wrote to his mother : "I plan to kill Holmes in the sixth aventure. He prevents me from thinking to better things." Mrs Doyle then starts effort to find him plots [4] and thanks to his supplications, Sherlock Holmes got a reprieve. Doyle moved in december 1892 in Davos, Switzerland, where the air is healthier for his wife suffering from tuberculosis. Not far away are the Reichenbach Falls, gorgeous, magnificent and terrifying framework conducive to a dramatic end. After a series of twelve new adventures [5] , Holmes died there, resulted in a fall into the abyss by Professor Moriarty ( The Adventure of the Final Problem ).

Despite fierce public outcry, and his mother, Conan Doyle refused to resurrect his detective. A new life begins. In 1894, he gave a series of lectures in the United States and is received by Rudyard Kipling in Vermont. He also corresponds with Robert Louis Stevenson which told him he was telling the Sherlock Holmes stories to the Samoan natives. The same year, his play A Story of Waterloo is performed in London with Henry Irving at the Lyceum. In Davos, he gives a demonstration of ski which he has discovered in Norway during a previous trip [6] . This is the first time that such "snow shoes" are introduced in the Alps. There, he also wrote The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (first novel in the saga of the soldier of the First Empire) and Rodney Stone (a novel about boxing). During the fall of 1895, in order to improve the health of his wife, Conan Doyle stayed in Cairo for several months. When the conflict between the British and the dervishes was growing seriously, he became a war correspondent for the Westminster Gazette . These events inspired the novel The Tragedy of the Korosko .

In october 1899, war broke out between England and African Orange and Transvaal Republics in South Africa. Conan Doyle engaged in december. Unfortunately, the Middlesex Yeomanry Regiment put him on a waiting list. Meanwhile, a friend, John Langman, who wishes to raise a fifty hospital beds in South Africa, offers him to supervise the operation. From march 1900, he led the hospital in Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange state, until august 1901. In october 1900, he ran for election in Edinburgh for MP, in favor of retaining Ireland within the United Kingdom. But was defeated. On his return to England, he wrote two books: The Great Boer War (1901) and The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct (1902). The latter was virulent against those who accused the English of abusing the Boers (rapes, use of dum-dum bullets...). This position, rather than his participation in the conflict earned him the title of Knight of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. He was from then: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes then makes his return.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is serialized between august 1901 and may 1902 in The Strand Magazine . But it is an adventure which takes place shortly before the death of the detective. It was only in 1903 that an American publisher convinced Conan Doyle to resurrect the detective, by offering him a large sum of money. Then, thirty-three new stories will be published between september 1903 ( The Adventure of the Empty House ) and march 1927 ( The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place ) [7] . In january 1906, Sir Arthur ran for elections (always Unionist so conservative) and suffered another defeat. The health of his wife Louisa suddenly worsen. Tumor occured and caused partial paralysis. She gradually weakened and died on 4 july 1906. This drama plunged him into a state of prostration near depression. George Edalji (1906) He then launched headlong into the George Edalji case, ayoung notary Indian origin, sentenced to seven years of prison for sending anonymous letters and mutilating cattle.

In the manner of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle lead his own investigation and proved his innocence. Jean Leckie In september 1907, Conan Doyle married Jean Elizabeth Leckie with whom he was in love since 1897 but always maintained a friendly relationship of respect for his wife. He moved to Crowborough in Sussex, where Jean gave him three children ( Denis , Adrian and Jean ). Two years later, the public discovers the crimes committed in Congo by the Belgian administration. Conan Doyle decided to take action at the international level by publishing: The Crime of the Congo and sending several articles in newspapers and correspondence with the President of the United States and the Emperor of Germany. All means were good to stop these crimes, which in twenty years, did more than a century of slavery victims across Africa. Oscar Slater (1910) Conan Doyle intervened in 1910 to restore the truth in the Oscar Slater case, a German Jew accused of murder and sentenced to death. He noted serious irregularities in the police investigation. Convinced of the innocence of the man, he sought to prove it. he didn't succeed completely but managed to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment [8] .

Professor Challenger (illustration by Conan Doyle himself) In 1912, Conan Doyle created a new character that will mark the literary world: the Professor Challenger in the novel: The Lost World . When World War I broke out in 1914, Conan Doyle formed a local volunteer unit that would later become officially The Crowborough Company of the 6th Royal Sussex Volunteer Regiment, where he served as second class. But when he wanted to go to the front, this "privilege" was refused due to his advanced age (55 years-old). So he put his pen to the service of his country and publishes a pamphlet entitled To Arms! . Throughout the war, he wrote carefully the history of the Great War day by day [9] . For this, he was directly communicating with generals on the battlefield. In 1916, he visited the English, Italian and French fronts and even met Clemenceau. The same year, his eldest son, Kingsley, was seriously wounded at the Battle of the Somme. He died of pneumonia in october 1918. The following february, his brother, Innes (Brigadier General) died the same way.

Sir Roger Casement Also in 1916, Conan Doyle intervened to obtain the grace of Sir Roger Casement, a leader of the Irish insurgents who joined the germans. Despite all his efforts the writer can not save him. Accused of treason, Sir Roger Casement is executed. In october 1916, Conan Doyle announced in the journal Light his conversion to spiritualism. During the last years of his life, he became the "crusader" of this movement that preaches salvation of humanity through science. Thus, from 1920 to 1923, he gave a series of lectures about spiritualism in Australia, in USA and in Canada. He published his autobiography, Memories and Adventures in 1924 and opened a spiritualism bookstore, The Psychic Bookshop in London, where he handled the editing of his own works. In particular he published The History of Spiritualism in two volumes and The Land of Mist , the latest adventure of Professor Challenger on a spiritualism theme.

He spends more time on conferences: in Paris, the International Spiritualist Congress in 1925, in London, the Congress he chaired in 1928, and then in South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries. After these trips, in 1929, exhausted, he suffered a heart attack. Nevertheless, against the advice of his doctors, he insisted on speaking at a ceremony commemorating the Armistice, then spent weeks in bed. He is recovering slowly but on 7 july 1930 at dawn, he died from a final heart attack. Published Biographies

Question: Who was the hero of several Sir Arthur Canon Doyle stories, first introduced in "The Lost World"?
Answer: PROFESSOR CHALLENGER