Conan Doyle, British physician,
novelist, and detective-story writer, creator of the unforgettable master sleuth
Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh and
educated at Stonyhurst College and the University of Edinburgh.
From 1882 to 1890 he practiced
medicine in Southsea, England. A Study in Scarlet, the first of 68
stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, appeared in 1887. The characterisation
of Holmes, his ability of ingenious deductive reasoning, was based on one of the
author's own university professors. Equally brilliant creations are those
of Holmes's foils: his friend Dr. Watson, the good-natured if bumbling narrator
of the stories, and the master criminal Professor Moriarty.
Conan Doyle was so immediately
successful in his literary career that approximately five years later he
abandoned his medical practice to devote his entire time to writing. Some
of the best known of the Holmes stories are The Sign of Four (1890), The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and
His Last Bow (1917). They made Conan Doyle internationally famous and
served to popularise the detective-story genre.
A Holmes cult arose and still
flourishes, notably through clubs of devotees such as the Baker Street
Irregulars. Conan Doyle's literary versatility brought him almost equal
fame for his historical romances such as Micah Clarke (1888), The White Company
(1890), Rodney Stone (1896), and Sir Nigel (1906), and for his play A Story of
Waterloo (1894). Conan Doyle served in the BoerWar as a physician, and on
his return to England wrote The Great Boer War (1900) and The Warin South
Africa: Its Causes and Conduct (1902), justifying England's participation.
For these works he was knighted in 1902. During World War I he wrote
History of the British Campaign in France and Flanders (6 vol., 1916-20) as a
tribute to British bravery. After the death of his eldest son in the war, he
became an advocate of spiritualism, lecturing and writing extensively on the
subject. His autobiography, Memories and Adventures, was published in
1924. Conan Doyle died in Crowborough, Sussex, England, on July 7, 1930.
