Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British doctor and author.[1][2] He is well known because he wrote short stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes. He also wrote science fiction and historical stories.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | |
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 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | |
| Born | Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle 22 May 1859 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | 7 July 1930 (aged 71) Crowborough, East Sussex, England |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, poet, physician |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | University of Edinburgh Medical School |
| Genre | Detective fiction, fantasy, science fiction, historical novels, non-fiction |
| Notable works | Stories of Sherlock Holmes The Lost World |
| Signature |  |
He became an agnostic by the time he left school. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1876 to 1881. He wrote short stories in his spare time. In 1882, he started working as a doctor in Southsea. He carried on writing short stories while he waited for patients. His first Sherlock Holmes story that was published was A Study in Scarlet.
Doyle's great gifts as a writer were story-telling and character. He created really memorable characters. Holmes' gift for deduction has been copied many times in fiction. The character was probably based on a doctor called Joseph Bell. Holmes himself and Watson were balanced by the evil genius Moriarty, one of the great villains in fiction.
After A Study in Scarlet came The Sign of the Four, The Valley of Fear and The Hound of the Baskervilles. The other Holmes stories were published in the Strand Magazine. They were later collected together in five volumes, starting with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Conan Doyle also wrote The Lost World, published in 1912. In it, Professor Challenger and his companions travel to find a large plateau in South America where dinosaurs still live.
Their children were: Mary Louise, Arthur Alleyne Kingsley (with Louise), Jean Lena Annette, Denis Percy Stewart, and Adrian Malcolm (with Jean). Doyle's wife Louisa died in 1906. After the death of his son Kingsley just before the end of the First World War, and the deaths of his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law and his two nephews shortly after the war, Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting spiritualism and its attempts to find proof of existence beyond the grave. He was a member of the renowned supernatural organisation The Ghost Club.[3]
Arthur Conan Doyle Media
Portrait of Doyle by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1893
Title page from Arthur Conan Doyle's thesis
Professor Challenger by Harry Rountree in the novella The Poison Belt published in The Strand Magazine
Portrait of Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget, 1904
Sherlock Holmes statue in Edinburgh, erected opposite the birthplace of Doyle, which was demolished c. 1970
Statue of Holmes and the English Church in Meiringen
Doyle with his family c. 1923–1925
Arthur Conan Doyle by George Wylie Hutchinson, 1894
Doyle statue in Crowborough, East Sussex
Doyle with his family in New York City, 1922
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References
- ↑ "Biography & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2019-05-18. Retrieved 2019-05-23.
- ↑ Edwards, Owen Dudley 2004. Doyle, Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan (1859–1930). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press
- ↑ Ian Topham (2010). "The Ghost Club – a history by Peter Underwood". Mysteriousbritain.co.uk. Retrieved 28 May 2013.