Arthur Conan Doyle

English physician and novelist

• Born: May 22, 1859
• Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
• Died: July 7, 1930
• Place of death: Crowborough, East Sussex, England

Doyle wrote on many subjects and was knighted for his contributions to the British cause during the South African War; however, his most enduring legacy was the creation of one of the first and most popular and long-lived of fictional detectives: Sherlock Holmes.

Early Life

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born into an artistic Roman Catholic family and grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, a Protestant stronghold. His grandfather and his uncle were illustrators; Richard, his uncle, gained fame drawing for Punch. Doyle’s father, Charles, became clerk of the Board of Works in Edinburgh, but he also drew. He illustrated the first edition of his son’s A Study in Scarlet (1887), the first tale of Sherlock Holmes. Charles suffered from mental illness and alcoholism and was institutionalized from 1879 until his death in 1893. Doyle’s mother, Mary Foley, was an Irish Catholic. She reared seven children, of whom Arthur was the fourth. Ever a practical woman, she oversaw Doyle’s education, sending him to Jesuit schools at Stoneyhurst and at Feldkirch, Austria, despite the family’s comparative poverty. She later encouraged him to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. They remained close until her death in 1921.

Doyle grew into a large and sturdy man, over six feet tall. Photographs show him square-headed and mustached, with a direct, self-confident gaze. A fine athlete, he was welcomed on cricket and soccer teams well into his middle years.

After starting his medical studies in 1877, Doyle began his writing career soon after. He published his first story, “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” in 1879. At the university, he met two professors who became models for his most famous literary creations: Dr. Joseph Bell, the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, and William Rutherford, the prototype for Professor Challenger of The Lost World (1912). Before finishing his bachelor of medicine, Doyle sought adventure, signing on as surgeon for an arctic whaling cruise in 1880. After taking his degree in 1881, he tried a second cruise, this time to Africa.

Doyle practiced medicine in Plymouth, then in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, and finally in London, but he was never notably successful. Upon completing his M.D. in 1885, he married Louise Hawkins. Within the first year of their marriage, Doyle wrote two novels but failed to publish them, though he continued to publish magazine pieces. A decisive moment in his career came in 1886, when he finished A Study in Scarlet , his first Sherlock Holmes adventure. The tale appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, where it attracted enough attention to warrant a separate edition in 1888.

As he entered fully into his writing career, Doyle seemed to be a man of balanced opposites: a lapsed Catholic who still respected the faith, a man of science turning to a profession in the arts, a man of reason already attracted to the Spiritualist movement, a man of physical strength and activity who also loved scholarship, a man who dreamed of producing great historical literature in the vein of Sir Walter Scott yet who was about to achieve greatness writing what he considered potboilers for a new popular magazine.

Life’s Work

To an extent, Doyle captured this balance of opposites in Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. In Holmes, the powers of reason are developed at the expense of the emotions. He solves crimes by keen observation, building hypotheses based on established facts, and testing those hypotheses. Watson, though quite competent, is a more ordinary man, a doctor who eventually marries and lives a prosaic life, except when with Holmes on a case. Then his life blossoms into adventure. Holmes is a creative genius, using a “scientific method” in an artistic manner to produce masterpieces of detection. Watson turns these masterpieces into what Holmes often describes as trivial romances, more entertaining than instructive.

Though Doyle proceeded to write what he considered great historical novels, some of which were quite well received, the public showed more interest in Holmes. At the request of Lippincott’s Magazine, Doyle produced The Sign of Four (1890). Giving up his medical practice in 1891, he turned to writing for his living. He then wrote a series of Holmes stories for The Strand, beginning with “A Scandal in Bohemia.” These were so popular that the editors asked for more. Before he had finished twelve—collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)—he was tired of his characters and told his mother he intended to kill Holmes in the last one. She recommended against this course.

When The Strand asked for more Holmes stories in 1892, Doyle tried to put them off, as he had when they asked for the second six in 1891. Then he had asked the “ridiculous” price of fifty pounds, which The Strand gladly paid. This time he asked for one thousand pounds per story, and again, The Strand was eager. Eventually collected as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), this series ended with “The Final Problem,” in which Holmes dies, falling down the Swiss Reichenbach Falls in the grip of Moriarty, “the Napoleon of crime.”

Having taken Louise to Switzerland after discovering her tuberculosis, Doyle was away from London when The Strand readers learned of Holmes’s death. Nevertheless, he heard in no uncertain terms the sorrow and anger of Holmes’s fans. Still, he published no more Holmes stories until The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902).

Between 1892 and 1901, Doyle continued writing popular stories for The Strand, the best about Etienne Gerard, a comic soldier in Napoleon’s army. He also made a successful reading tour of the United States, sailed up the Nile with Louise, and visited the Sudan as a war correspondent. Having been convinced that the climate of Surrey was good for tuberculosis patients, Doyle and Louise settled there in 1896. In 1897, Doyle met and fell in love with Jean Leckie, then twenty-four. With typical loyalty and honor, Doyle maintained a platonic relationship with her until after Louise’s death. He married Jean in 1907. They had three children: Denis (1909), Adrian (1910), and Lena Jean (1912).

Before the outbreak of the South African (Boer) War in 1899, Doyle published story collections, novels, poetry, and drama. When the war began, he was turned down for combat because of his age, but he served under terrible conditions and without pay as a medical officer. His experiences in the war led to two books. In the second, The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Conduct (1902), he defended the British role in the war. For this service, he was knighted in 1902.

After running unsuccessfully for a seat in Parliament in 1900, Doyle visited Dartmoor. There, he heard legends that became the inspiration for The Hound of the Baskervilles. In this most famous Holmes story, Watson and Holmes solve the murder of a country gentleman and save the life of his heir, both of whom are beset by a “hell hound,” supposedly the product of an ancestral curse.

While this novel was appearing in The Strand, William Gillette’s play Sherlock Holmes (1899) opened successfully in London, and the demand for more Holmes stories increased. American and British publishers offered Doyle approximately seventy-five hundred dollars per story to write more. He began a new series with “The Adventure of the Empty House,” in which Holmes returns after three years of hiding from surviving members of Moriarty’s gang, for he had not really fallen with Moriarty over the falls. This series was collected in The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905).

Doyle continued to produce Holmes stories sporadically for the rest of his life. The Valley of Fear (1915) recounts an encounter with agents of Moriarty. His Last Bow (1917) collects stories that had appeared in The Strand between 1893 and 1917. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927) collects stories from 1921 to 1927. Doyle’s last Holmes story was “The Adventure of Schoscombe Old Place.”

Though his popularity and subsequent fame have rested mainly upon the Holmes tales, Doyle was reluctant to see these as his enduring achievements. Energetic, inquisitive, and ambitious, he sought to influence public opinion in many ways. In 1906, he ran for Parliament, again unsuccessfully. After Louise’s death, he took humanitarian interest in English legal reform and in Belgian policy in the Congo. He spoke out on political issues such as Irish home rule, participated in an Anglo-German auto race, traveled widely in Europe and America, and was a war correspondent during World War I.

In 1916, Doyle became convinced that he had received a spirit message and proceeded to become a leader of the Spiritualist movement. He wrote several books on Spiritualism, including The History of Spiritualism (1926), a study that has been praised despite the prejudices of its author. He also came to believe in fairies and wrote about them. He gave generous financial support to research into the paranormal, especially communication with the dead. His friendship with Harry Houdini came to an end because Houdini exposed so many fraudulent claims.

The best-remembered creation from the last third of his life is another character, Professor Challenger, the hero of The Lost World (the novel that provided the basis for the classic film King Kong, 1933). Challenger is a passionate scientist, eager to explore unknown worlds. Like Holmes, Challenger eventually became a film hero as well as appearing in several successful novels and stories, but he never approached the popularity of Holmes.

Doyle fell ill with heart disease in 1929 and died in 1930 at his home, Windlesham, where he was buried.

Significance

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s biographers all characterize him as a late Victorian type. Throughout his life, he remained confident in the soundness of his own moral vision and in the basic goodness of British morality. As a public personage, he repeatedly took the lead, both in praising British principles and in criticizing particular policies. He is credited with helping to modernize British defense between the South African War and World War I, especially the defensive gear of common soldiers. He twice played detective himself, investigating cases of people unjustly condemned to prison. One of these, the Edalji case (1906), contributed to establishing a court of criminal appeal in 1907. Even his support of Spiritualism was a public crusade to effect the spiritual transformation of a nation he feared was in decline.

While his public services were many, including credit for introducing skiing to the Alps, Doyle will continue to be remembered mainly for the Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes and Watson are indelible fixtures of Western culture, encountered in virtually every popular medium. These stories have influenced every important writer in the detective genre, from traditionalists such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ellery Queen to “hard-boiled” writers such as Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and P. D. James.

Bibliography

Barsham, Diana. Arthur Conan Doyle and the Meaning of Masculinity. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. Barsham explains how Doyle viewed himself and his work as models of British manhood, and describes his commitment to finding solutions to issues of nineteenth century masculinity.

Booth, Martin. The Doctor, the Detective, and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography of Arthur Conan Doyle. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997. A comprehensive, readable biography, describing the many activities and interests in Doyle’s life. Booth recounts Doyle’s experiences as a military doctor, war correspondent, spiritualist, cricket player, and politician, as well as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Carr, John Dickson. The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Harper & Row, 1949. Written with the help of Adrian Doyle, this biography draws on primary sources unavailable to subsequent biographers but avoids some problematic sides of his life.

Cox, Don Richard. Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1985. Cox discusses virtually all of Doyle’s writing, with chapters on historical fiction, Sherlock Holmes, other genres, and nonfiction. A portrait of Doyle as revealed in his writing.

Edwards, Owen Dudley. The Quest for Sherlock Holmes. Totawa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1983. Concentrating on the years before A Study in Scarlet, Edwards uses records from Edinburgh and Doyle’s schools to examine parental and educational influences.

Higham, Charles. The Adventures of Conan Doyle. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976. Combining biography and a critical review of Doyle’s fiction, Higham consults uncollected materials such as Doyle’s letters to the London Times. Gives special attention to the relationship between Doyle, Louise, and Jean Leckie.

Nordon, Pierre. Conan Doyle: A Biography. Translated by Frances Partridge. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966. This objective and scholarly biography focuses on relationships between Doyle’s public life and his writing, with special attention to his interest in Spiritualism.

Shreffler, Philip A., ed. The Baker Street Reader. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984. A collection of critical material on Doyle’s detective stories, this book helpfully places Doyle’s work in the traditions of detective fiction and explores the reasons for its popularity.

Stashower, Daniel. Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: Henry Holt, 1999. Thorough, well-researched biography that attempts to separate Doyle from Sherlock Holmes and describe the entire range of Doyle’s interests and activities. Places special emphasis on the psychic crusade upon which Doyle embarked in his final years.