Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
British author
in full Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
born May 22, 1859, Edinburgh, Scotland
died July 7, 1930, Crowborough, Sussex, England
Main
Scottish writer best known for his creation of the detective Sherlock
Holmes—one of the most vivid and enduring characters in English fiction.
Conan Doyle, the second of Charles Altamont and Mary Foley Doyle’s 10
children, began seven years of Jesuit education in Lancashire, England,
in 1868. After an additional year of schooling in Feldkirch, Austria,
Conan Doyle returned to Edinburgh. Through the influence of Dr. Bryan
Charles Waller, his mother’s lodger, he prepared for entry into the
University of Edinburgh’s Medical School. He received his Bachelor of
Medicine and Master of Surgery qualifications from Edinburgh in 1881 and
an M.D. in 1885, upon completing his thesis, “An Essay upon the
Vasomotor Changes in Tabes Dorsalis.”
While a medical student, Conan Doyle was deeply impressed by the
skill of his professor, Dr. Joseph Bell, in observing the most minute
detail regarding a patient’s condition. This master of diagnostic
deduction became the model for Conan Doyle’s literary creation, Sherlock
Holmes, who first appeared in A Study in Scarlet in Beeton’s Christmas
Annual of 1887. Other aspects of Conan Doyle’s medical education and
experiences appear in his semiautobiographical novels, The Firm of
Girdlestone (1890) and The Stark Munro Letters (1895), and in the
collection of medical short stories Round the Red Lamp (1894). His
creation of the logical, cold, calculating Holmes, the “world’s first
and only consulting detective,” sharply contrasted with the paranormal
beliefs Conan Doyle addressed in a short novel of this period, The
Mystery of Cloomber (1889). Conan Doyle’s early interest in both
scientifically supportable evidence and certain paranormal phenomena
exemplified the complex diametrically opposing beliefs he struggled with
throughout his life.
Although public clamour prompted him to continue writing Sherlock
Holmes adventures through 1926, Conan Doyle claimed the success of
Holmes overshadowed the merit he believed his other historical fiction
deserved, most notably his tale of 14th-century chivalry, The White
Company (1891), its companion piece, Sir Nigel (1906), and his
adventures of the Napoleonic war hero Brigadier Gerard and the
19th-century skeptical scientist Professor George Edward Challenger.
When his passions ran high, Conan Doyle also turned to nonfiction.
His subjects include military writings, The Great Boer War (1900) and
The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 6 vol. (1916–20), the
Belgian atrocities in the Congo in The Crime of the Congo (1909), as
well as his involvement in the actual criminal cases of George Edalji
and Oscar Slater.
Conan Doyle married Louisa Hawkins in 1885, and together they had two
children, Mary and Kingsley. A year after Louisa’s death in 1906, he
married Jean Leckie and with her had three children, Denis, Adrian, and
Jean. Conan Doyle was knighted in 1902 for his work with a field
hospital in Bloemfontein, South Africa, and other services during the
South African (Boer) War.
Conan Doyle himself viewed his most important efforts to be his
campaign in support of spiritualism, the religion and psychic research
subject based upon the belief that spirits of the departed continued to
exist in the hereafter and can be contacted by those still living on
earth. He donated the majority of his literary efforts and profits later
in his life to this campaign, beginning with The New Revelation (1918)
and The Vital Message (1919). He later chronicled his travels in
supporting the spiritualist cause in The Wanderings of a Spiritualist
(1921), Our American Adventure (1923), Our Second American Adventure
(1924), and Our African Winter (1929). He discussed other spiritualist
issues in his Case for Spirit Photography (1922), Pheneas Speaks (1927),
and a two-volume The History of Spiritualism (1926). Conan Doyle became
the world’s most renowned proponent of spiritualism, but he faced
considerable opposition for his conviction from the magician Harry
Houdini and in a 1920 debate with the humanist Joseph McCabe. Even
spiritualists joined in criticizing Conan Doyle’s article “The Evidence
for Fairies,” published in The Strand Magazine in 1921, and his
subsequent book The Coming of the Fairies (1922), in which he voiced
support for the claim that two young girls, Elsie Wright and Frances
Griffiths, had photographed actual fairies that they had seen in the
Yorkshire village of Cottingley.
Conan Doyle died in Windlesham, his home in Crowborough, Sussex, and
at his funeral, his family and members of the spiritualist community
celebrated rather than mourned the occasion of his passing beyond the
veil. On July 13, 1930, thousands of people filled London’s Royal Albert
Hall for a séance during which Estelle Roberts, the spiritualist medium,
claimed to have contacted Sir Arthur.
Conan Doyle detailed what he valued most in life in his
autobiography, Memories and Adventures (1924), and the importance that
books held for him in Through the Magic Door (1907).
Philip K. Wilson
