Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He is best known for his four novels and fifty-six short stories about the fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr. Watson, which are milestones in crime fiction, and for his first work featuring Professor Challenger, The Lost World (1912), which gave its name to a subgenre of speculative fiction. He was a prolific writer who produced over 200 stories and articles, four volumes of poetry, and a number of works for the stage. He was knighted by King Edward VII in the 1902 Coronation Honours.
Born in Edinburgh, Doyle published his earliest stories whilst studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and he served as a doctor and surgeon on two sea voyages before establishing an unsuccessful medical practice in Portsmouth. His time at sea inspired the short story "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), which popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste. His first Sherlock Holmes work, the novel A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887, and the short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" (1891) was the first of twenty-four monthly Holmes stories published in The Strand Magazine, for which Doyle became one of the most famous and well-paid authors of his time. His ambivalence towards the character led to Holmes's being killed off in "The Final Problem" (1893); but public outcry resulted in his return in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901), and Doyle continued to write stories featuring him up to 1927. He was also known for his humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard.
Doyle was involved in political activism throughout his life and twice stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. He wrote in support of compulsory vaccination, the British causes in the Second Boer War and First World War and the reform of the Congo Free State. He was a fervent advocate of justice who personally investigated two closed cases, both resulting in the exoneration of the accused men and setting precedent which partially led to the establishment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907. He was noted for his skill as an architect and was involved in several sports as a player and judge.
Doyle was raised a Catholic but was agnostic as a young adult, later becoming a spiritualist mystic as a result of family tragedies, and was a Freemason for two separate periods. He embraced supernatural phenomena, including psychics, telepathy, mentalism and spirit photography, and publicly supported the Cottingley Fairies, later confirmed to be a hoax, which led to a public falling-out with his friend, the American magician Harry Houdini. Doyle's works are still widely read and adapted in the 21st century, with Sherlock Holmes being recognised as the single most portrayed literary character in film and television history, and a number of fictional works have depicted or been inspired by his life.
Early life
Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was born in England, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary (), was Irish Catholic. His parents married in 1855.The details of the births of Arthur and his siblings are unclear. Some sources say there were nine children, some say ten. It seems three died in childhood. See Owen Dudley Edwards, "Doyle, Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan (1859–1930)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; Encyclopædia Britannica ; Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, Wordsworth Editions, 2007 p. viii; . In 1864, the family scattered because of Charles's growing alcoholism. The children were temporarily housed across Edinburgh. Arthur lodged with Mary Burton, the aunt of a friend, at Liberton Bank House on Gilmerton Road, while studying at Newington Academy.
In 1867, the family came together again and lived in squalid tenement flats at 3 Sciennes Place.Owen Dudley Edwards, "Doyle, Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan (1859–1930)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatric illness.Stashower, pp. 20–21. Beginning at an early age, throughout his life Doyle wrote letters to his mother. Many of them were preserved.
Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, to the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire, at the age of nine (1868–70). He went on to Stonyhurst College, which he attended until 1875. While Doyle was not unhappy at Stonyhurst, he said he did not have any fond memories of it because the school was run on medieval principles: the only subjects covered were rudiments, rhetoric, Euclidean geometry, algebra, and the classics. Doyle commented later in his life that this academic system could be excused only "on the plea that any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort of mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind". He found the school harsh, noting that, instead of compassion and warmth, it favoured the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation.
From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria. His family decided that he would spend a year there in order to perfect his German and broaden his academic horizons. He was raised Catholic but later rejected the faith and became an agnostic. One source attributed his drift away from religion to the time he spent in the less strict Austrian school. He also later became a spiritualist mystic.Pascal, Janet B. (2000). Arthur Conan Doyle: Beyond Baker Street. Oxford University Press. p. 139.
Name Doyle is often referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying that "Conan" is part of a compound surname rather than a middle name. However, his baptism entry in the register of St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his given names and "Doyle" as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.Stashower says that the compound version of his surname originated from his great-uncle Michael Conan, a distinguished journalist, from whom Arthur and his elder sister, Annette, received the compound surname of "Conan Doyle" (Stashower 20–21). The same source points out that in 1885 he was describing himself on the brass nameplate outside his house, and on his doctoral thesis, as "A. Conan Doyle" (Stashower 70). The catalogues of the British Library and the Library of Congress treat "Doyle" alone as his surname.Redmond, Christopher (2009). Sherlock Holmes Handbook 2nd ed. Dundurn. p. 97. Google Books. Retrieved 11 February 2017.
Steven Doyle, publisher of The Baker Street Journal, wrote: "Conan was Arthur's middle name. Shortly after he graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort of surname. But technically his last name is simply 'Doyle'."Doyle, Steven; Crowder, David A. (2010). Sherlock Holmes for Dummies. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 51. When knighted, he was gazetted as Doyle, not under the compound Conan Doyle.
Medical career From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School; during this period he spent time working in Aston (then a town in Warwickshire, now part of Birmingham), Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire. Also during this period, he studied practical botany at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. While studying, Doyle began writing short stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood's Magazine. His first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879. On 20 September 1879, he published his first academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal, a study which The Daily Telegraph regarded as potentially useful in a 21st-century murder investigation.
Doyle was the doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880.Conan Doyle, Arthur (Author), Lellenberg, Jon (Editor), Stashower, Daniel (Editor) (2012). Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure. University of Chicago Press; . On 11 July 1880, John Gray's Hope and David Gray's Eclipse met up with the Eira and Leigh Smith. The photographer W. J. A. Grant took a photograph aboard the Eira of Doyle along with Smith, the Gray brothers, and ship's surgeon William Neale, who were members of the Smith expedition. That expedition explored Franz Josef Land, and led to the naming, on 18 August, of Cape Flora, Bell Island, Nightingale Sound, Gratton ("Uncle Joe") Island, and Mabel Island.
After graduating with Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery (M.B. C.M.) degrees from the University of Edinburgh in 1881, he was ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree (an advanced degree beyond the basic medical qualification in the UK) with a dissertation on tabes dorsalis in 1885.Available at the Edinburgh Research Archive .
In 1882, Doyle partnered with his former classmate George Turnavine Budd in a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.Stashower, pp. 52–59. Arriving in Portsmouth in June 1882, with less than £10 (£ in ) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.Stashower, pp. 55, 58–59. The practice was not successful. While waiting for patients, Doyle returned to writing fiction.
Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination and wrote several articles advocating the practice and denouncing the views of anti-vaccinators.
In early 1891, Doyle embarked on the study of ophthalmology in Vienna. He had previously studied at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital in order to qualify to perform eye tests and prescribe glasses. Vienna had been suggested by his friend Vernon Morris as a place to spend six months and train to be an eye surgeon. But Doyle found it too difficult to understand the German medical terms being used in his classes in Vienna, and soon quit his studies there. For the rest of his two-month stay in Vienna, he pursued other activities, such as ice skating with his wife Louisa and drinking with Brinsley Richards of the London Times. He also wrote The Doings of Raffles Haw.
After visiting Venice and Milan, he spent a few days in Paris observing Edmund Landolt, an expert on diseases of the eye. Within three months of his departure for Vienna, Doyle returned to London. He opened a small office and consulting room at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, or 2 Devonshire Place as it was then. (There is today a Westminster City Council commemorative plaque over the front door.) He had no patients, according to his autobiography, and his efforts as an ophthalmologist were a failure.Stashower, pp. 114–118.
Literary career
Sherlock Holmes
Doyle initially struggled to find a publisher. His first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written in three weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication by Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 () in exchange for all rights to the story. The piece appeared a year later in the Beeton's Christmas Annual and received good reviews in The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.