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Memories and Adventures
This autobiography of Arthur Conan Doyle describes the varied aspects of his professional life as a doctor, sportsman, adventurer, political campaigner and author. It recounts the many true adventures that befell him and his relationship with such figures as Oscar Wilde, Kipling and Arthur Balfour.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
About the author
Arthur Conan Doyle
16.7k books24.9k followersSir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.
Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.
Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
May 14, 2020
Siempre es un placer leer a Conan Doyle. Sus "Memorias y aventuras" nos hacen retroceder a esa época victoriana y post-vistoriana en la que se escribieron algunas de las mejores obras literarias, o al menos algunos de los relatos y novelas que más disfruto. La pena, que no se hable demasiado de nuestro querido Sherlock. En cuanto al tema psíquico y espiritista (ese último capítulo y breves atisbos durante todo el libro), ¡joder!, casi consigue convencerle a uno. La edición de Valdemar, como siempre, fantástica.
March 22, 2022
Mar 21, 830pm ~~ Review asap.
Mar 22, 1030am ~~ This was my year to read Arthur Conan Doyle. Not the Sherlock Holmes stories, but some of his other works of fiction. And I thought I would round off my little project with this book, the autobiography he published in 1924, six years before his death at age 71.
The 32 chapters here covered his life from childhood through World War One, and were mostly very interesting, although I did reach a point of skimming towards the end when he spoke about various 'great men' he had known and then politics, and four or five chapters about the war. I simply did not want to focus too much on those war chapters, not with all the nonsense going on in our world today. I was not sure I wanted to read more of his thoughts about war, and you will see why by the end of this review.
I had known very little about ACD before this book. I knew he was a doctor, and I knew he wrote Sherlock Holmes stories, but other facts came as a surprise to me. He was a ship's surgeon on a whaling boat once. He was a ship's surgeon on a ship in the African trade another time. He was a war correspondent and doctor in the Boer War and wrote a history of that war while it was ongoing. He searched his entire life for a philosophy to believe in, eventually decided that Spiritualism would be his truth, and accepted the ridicule heaped upon him for that belief.
Besides being a war correspondent he also covered the London Olympic Games of 1908, and after witnessing the many controversies during those games he had this to say:
"When I consider the Dunraven Yacht race, and then these Olympic Games, I am by no means assured that sport has that international effect for good which some people have claimed for it. I wonder whether any of the old Grecian wars had their real origin in the awards at Olympia."
I was uncomfortable with ACD at times. I did not think it was very respectful for him to sneak into a mosque in what was then Constantinople in order to watch services during one of the most holy nights of the Islamic calendar.
And I detested his glorification of war. Here is what he said during the Boer War:
"Wonderful is the atmosphere of war. When the millennium comes the world will gain much, but it will lose its greatest thrill."
PIFFLE.
Mar 22, 1030am ~~ This was my year to read Arthur Conan Doyle. Not the Sherlock Holmes stories, but some of his other works of fiction. And I thought I would round off my little project with this book, the autobiography he published in 1924, six years before his death at age 71.
The 32 chapters here covered his life from childhood through World War One, and were mostly very interesting, although I did reach a point of skimming towards the end when he spoke about various 'great men' he had known and then politics, and four or five chapters about the war. I simply did not want to focus too much on those war chapters, not with all the nonsense going on in our world today. I was not sure I wanted to read more of his thoughts about war, and you will see why by the end of this review.
I had known very little about ACD before this book. I knew he was a doctor, and I knew he wrote Sherlock Holmes stories, but other facts came as a surprise to me. He was a ship's surgeon on a whaling boat once. He was a ship's surgeon on a ship in the African trade another time. He was a war correspondent and doctor in the Boer War and wrote a history of that war while it was ongoing. He searched his entire life for a philosophy to believe in, eventually decided that Spiritualism would be his truth, and accepted the ridicule heaped upon him for that belief.
Besides being a war correspondent he also covered the London Olympic Games of 1908, and after witnessing the many controversies during those games he had this to say:
"When I consider the Dunraven Yacht race, and then these Olympic Games, I am by no means assured that sport has that international effect for good which some people have claimed for it. I wonder whether any of the old Grecian wars had their real origin in the awards at Olympia."
I was uncomfortable with ACD at times. I did not think it was very respectful for him to sneak into a mosque in what was then Constantinople in order to watch services during one of the most holy nights of the Islamic calendar.
And I detested his glorification of war. Here is what he said during the Boer War:
"Wonderful is the atmosphere of war. When the millennium comes the world will gain much, but it will lose its greatest thrill."
PIFFLE.
November 2, 2024
It's going to be an incoherent review, the circumstances make it difficult for me to write something well-thought out these days, I hope it will get better soon.
Plus, as I was reading Doyle's memories, I was often changing my mind about him : I alternately wanted to slap him and hug him !
- As a sportsman, he made me think of Captain Hastings (with more brains and less taste for pretty women) : eager to practice any sport, to risk danger, to travel all over the world and experience new (action) things : the kind of man who can't remain sitting for long, he loves adrenaline !
- As a military, Victorian man, I found him sometimes stuffy, with very strict, colonial oriented, conservative opinions and a dreadful view on women (those awful gossips who are only useful at decorating dinner tables!) and it made me angry at him. Several times.
- I found his passion and his quest for truth in spiritism touching. I know it was all the fashion back then, but he hardly seems like a man subject to fashion. He had doubts, questions and he looked for answers. Many people must have thought him a fool, he carried on anyway.
- For a conservative, stuffy man, he had a deep admiration for the non-conservative, non-stuffy Oscar Wilde.
- My opinions and his differ on many subjects, but I admire him for one thing : if he felt something was wrong, unjust, needed to be changed, he went for it, he fought. He wrote, he met important men, he travelled to meet people (more important men - women were merely decorative in dinners, in those days), he thought out plans, he acted. Do you know he's at the origin of the invention of the lifebuoy ?! To save drowning sailors. And that he was very much in favour of the Channel tunnel (for commerce and tourism, not for war). At a time when lots of people whine about what's wrong in the world and nobody lifts a finger, it feels good to see someone actually do something for what he believes in.
- As he was writing about hunting as a sport and having begun the book with whale hunting, I was about to growl when he started talking about animals and their pain, how cruel hunting can be and how he practised it less and less, and he flipped me like a pancake...
- When he spoke about war and what must be done (and I got a little bored and saw him again as a stuffy old boy), he suddenly shifted to all the accidents he experienced in his life and talks about them with such nonchalance, such good humour that you can't help but smile at his good mood.
Of course, I'm going to keep reading Conan Doyle's books. I'm re-reading Sherlock Holmes, I'll then jump to professor Challenger, to Brigadier Gérard and everything I can lay my hands on. I adored him as a teenager, I still have a fondness for him in spite of many things. I think what got me what his wonderful sense of humour. He's like a stuffy old uncle who jumps everywhere, talks about all his adventures around the world and makes jokes with a spark in his eyes - you don't really agree with everything he says, but you can't help loving him. I think I'll always be partial to him !
Plus, as I was reading Doyle's memories, I was often changing my mind about him : I alternately wanted to slap him and hug him !
- As a sportsman, he made me think of Captain Hastings (with more brains and less taste for pretty women) : eager to practice any sport, to risk danger, to travel all over the world and experience new (action) things : the kind of man who can't remain sitting for long, he loves adrenaline !
- As a military, Victorian man, I found him sometimes stuffy, with very strict, colonial oriented, conservative opinions and a dreadful view on women (those awful gossips who are only useful at decorating dinner tables!) and it made me angry at him. Several times.
- I found his passion and his quest for truth in spiritism touching. I know it was all the fashion back then, but he hardly seems like a man subject to fashion. He had doubts, questions and he looked for answers. Many people must have thought him a fool, he carried on anyway.
- For a conservative, stuffy man, he had a deep admiration for the non-conservative, non-stuffy Oscar Wilde.
- My opinions and his differ on many subjects, but I admire him for one thing : if he felt something was wrong, unjust, needed to be changed, he went for it, he fought. He wrote, he met important men, he travelled to meet people (more important men - women were merely decorative in dinners, in those days), he thought out plans, he acted. Do you know he's at the origin of the invention of the lifebuoy ?! To save drowning sailors. And that he was very much in favour of the Channel tunnel (for commerce and tourism, not for war). At a time when lots of people whine about what's wrong in the world and nobody lifts a finger, it feels good to see someone actually do something for what he believes in.
- As he was writing about hunting as a sport and having begun the book with whale hunting, I was about to growl when he started talking about animals and their pain, how cruel hunting can be and how he practised it less and less, and he flipped me like a pancake...
- When he spoke about war and what must be done (and I got a little bored and saw him again as a stuffy old boy), he suddenly shifted to all the accidents he experienced in his life and talks about them with such nonchalance, such good humour that you can't help but smile at his good mood.
Of course, I'm going to keep reading Conan Doyle's books. I'm re-reading Sherlock Holmes, I'll then jump to professor Challenger, to Brigadier Gérard and everything I can lay my hands on. I adored him as a teenager, I still have a fondness for him in spite of many things. I think what got me what his wonderful sense of humour. He's like a stuffy old uncle who jumps everywhere, talks about all his adventures around the world and makes jokes with a spark in his eyes - you don't really agree with everything he says, but you can't help loving him. I think I'll always be partial to him !
July 9, 2022
A 12 hour unabridged audiobook
An autobiography of Doyle? Why not.
One would expect a well known author to do a fine job at their own autobiography, and he has.
This is a man who didnt just have a good imagination, he traveled the world and was an adventurer in his own right. I enjoyed listening to this.
An autobiography of Doyle? Why not.
One would expect a well known author to do a fine job at their own autobiography, and he has.
This is a man who didnt just have a good imagination, he traveled the world and was an adventurer in his own right. I enjoyed listening to this.
June 23, 2026
(1924) Perhaps only the Doyle devotee will sit patiently through the chapters on sport, politics, business, and through the name-dropping chapter in which Wells and Haggard get the same short space as some statesman, prince or general few remember today (Doyle would have done well to reread his Washington Irving on this score), and Bram Stoker is a footnote to actor Henry Irving. But if you’re the kind of person who could sit through a slide show of a vacation if Doyle were at the projector, then even these sections will be enjoyable. The writing is beautiful as always.
“Our descendants will never realize the terror of the horses…”
If the book is not solid gold, it is, as he would say, gold in clay. Who wouldn’t want to hear from one of the period’s brightest observers what the transition to automobiles was like, or read of a poor and preternaturally enterprising youth—forgoing his daily and much-needed mutton pie to buy books—rising to fame and fortune and hobnobbing with the president?
At the time of this autobiography, Doyle was 65—what he called the start of his “golden autumn.” But I’m glad he, unlike Kipling, didn’t wait much longer to write it, since he died only six years later. He had a remarkable life. He was kind of a minor Benjamin Franklin in the diversity of his achievements. (The book made me feel bad about my own life though.) Again like Franklin, Doyle had a real can-do spirit. The difference is his was met with a British regulatory state that continually nipped it in the bud.
There were so many close calls which could’ve robbed us of his work! A riding accident. Car crashes. A mortal fever. Poisonous desert creatures. A virulent outbreak among his patients that he only survived because he happened to try a new vaccine. A narrow miss of an exploding shell here, or an ambuscade there. A sort of wizard club which, though very tempted, he declined to join, and which would probably have derailed his artistic pursuits (earlier than Spiritualism did). Experimenting once with shooting in the air, Doyle almost killed a plein-air painter. And then what if that early acquaintance had never suggested Doyle try writing fiction in the first place? Of course all lives seem maddeningly chancy in retrospect.
“No. 410 holds one rigid arm and clenched fist in the air. We lower it, but up it springs menacing, aggressive. I put his mantle over him; but still, as we look back, we see the projection of that raised arm. So he met his end—somebody’s boy. Fair fight, open air, and a great cause—I know no better death.”
Doyle gives a good slice of life of the Boer war, and likes to use his autobiography as an opportunity to share his many, many opinions on everything and make woefully inaccurate predictions about the future. His involvement in the Great War (in which he lost his brother, son, and many others) dominates the latter portion of the book, and he gives a revealing glimpse into how and why that always baffling conflict began. The scale of destruction is mind-boggling whenever you read about it, but it adds extra layers to hear a person from that period talk as if it will always be remembered, and you know it will not, and as if it will never be equaled, and you know it will soon be dwarfed.
_______________________
Notes and quotes:
Thackeray, “tall, white-haired and affable,” visited his house when he was little.
“My father… may be said to be the father of polite caricature, for in the old days satire took the brutal shape of making the object grotesque in features and figure.”
“…these were the years when Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill were our chief philosophers, and that even the man in the street felt the strong sweeping current of their thought.” In a later audio interview he names Huxley and Ernst Haeckel as responsible for his early agnosticism.
“However, at dawn upon the third, the ship’s company took to the ice, and began to gather in its murderous harvest. It is brutal work, though not more brutal than that which goes on to supply every dinner-table in the country. And yet those glaring crimson pools upon the dazzling white of the icefields, under the peaceful silence of a blue Arctic sky, did seem a horrible intrusion.”
Credits his “inexhaustible store of energy” to the arctic air from his whaling days.
Posits that the sinking of Atlantis may have been so gradual that Hanno the Carthaginian witnessed the volcanic fires.
Earliest stories were “feeble echoes of Bret Harte.”
Called Southsea his second favorite city, after London.
“If one loses the explanation that this life is a spiritual chastening for another, and thinks that death ends all, and that this is our one experience, then it is impossible to sustain the goodness or the omnipotence of God.”
“…a voyage is bleak indeed if one has no conception to what port one is bound. I had laid aside the old charts as useless, and had quite despaired of ever finding a new one which would enable me to steer an intelligible course, save towards that mist which was all that my pilots, Huxley, Mill, Spencer and others, could see ahead of us.”
Of the stories in Captain of the Polestar: “Some of them are perhaps as good honest work as any that I have done.”
“I see Haggard too, first as the young spruce diplomatist, later as the worn and bearded man with strange vague tendencies to mysticism.”
Of Shaw: “It took a good man to write Saint Joan.”
The Physiologist’s Wife was “written when I was under the influence of Henry James.”
“I sat next to Anstey that night, who had just made a most deserved hit with his Vice Versa.”
Gives an account of the meeting with Wilde and an American publisher that gave birth to Dorian Grey and the second Sherlock novel.
On Human Personality, by a psychic researcher named Myers: “It may, in my opinion, take a permanent place in human literature like the Novum Organum or The Descent of Man or any other great root-book which has marked a date in human thought.
“I began to experiment in thought transference, and I found a fellow-researcher in Mr. Ball, a well-known architect in the town. Again and again, sitting behind him, I have drawn diagrams, and he in turn has made approximately the same figure. I showed beyond any doubt whatever that I could convey my thought without words.”
“It was there I learned to face an audience, which proved to be of the first importance for my life’s work. I was naturally of a very nervous, backward, self-distrustful disposition in such things and I have been told that the signal that I was about to join in the discussion was that the whole long bench on which I sat, with every one on it, used to shake with my emotion.”
Claims (dubiously) the innovation of a recurring character in short stories was his. This seems to be when Sherlock really took off in popularity. “Considering these various journals with their disconnected stories it had struck me that a single character running through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine. On the other hand, it had long seemed to me that the ordinary serial might be an impediment rather than a help to a magazine, since, sooner or later, one missed one number and afterwards it had lost all interest. Clearly the ideal compromise was a character which carried through, and yet instalments which were each complete in themselves, so that the purchaser was always sure that he could relish the whole contents of the magazine. I believe that I was the first to realize this and The Strand Magazine the first to put it into practice.”
“…The Great Shadow, a booklet which I should put near the front of my work for merit.”
Includes a great parody of Sherlock by JM Barrie.
“My only criticism of the films is that they introduce telephones, motor cars and other luxuries of which the Victorian Holmes never dreamed.”
Called The Adventure of the Second Stain one of the neatest of his stories.
Victor Hugo believed in psychic phenomena.
“It was during the years roughly from 1888 to 1893 that Rudyard Kipling, James Stephen Phillips, Watson, Grant Allen, Wells, Barrie, Bernard Shaw, H. A. Jones, Pinero, Marie Corelli, Stanley Weyman, Anthony Hope, Hall Caine, and a whole list of others were winning their spurs.”
Charles Reade “was really a great innovator as well as a most dramatic writer, for it was he who first introduced realism and founded his stories upon carefully arranged documents. He was the literary father of Zola. George Eliot has never appealed to me much, for I like my effects in a less leisurely fashion; but Trollope also I consider to be a very original writer…”
On my favorite newspaperman Robert Barr: “a volcanic Anglo- or rather Scot-American, with a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest of natures underneath it all. He was one of the best raconteurs I have ever known, and as a writer I have always felt that he did not quite come into his own.”
Of the Raffles stories by his brother-in-law: “…there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal the hero.”
To America: “…you will find that there is only one which can at all understand your ways and your aspirations, or will have the least sympathy. That is the mother country which you are now so fond of insulting.”
On Egypt: “Of all the singular experiences of this most venerable land, surely this rebuilding at the hands of a little group of bustling, clear-headed Anglo-Saxons is the most extraordinary.”
Check out his story A Desert Drama.
Doyle was recently not deemed important enough to preserve his Undershaw home. It’s now a facility for mentally disabled kids.
On the romance and camaraderie of war: “When the millennium comes the world will gain much, but it will lose its greatest thrill.”
“…the pig screams horribly. I had rather see a man killed.”
Resented the idea that his spiritualism was the result of his son’s death.
“…the only place for swords, lances and all the frippery of the past was a museum. Bayonets also are very questionable.”
“Sir Nigel represents in my opinion my high-water mark in literature.”
“…such judicial crimes are not, I am convinced, done with impunity even to the most humble. Somehow—somewhere, there comes a national punishment in return.” Doyle had helped free two men from prison.
On spotting a sea monster: “It was exactly like a young ichthyosaurus, about 4 feet long, with thin neck and tail, and four marked side-flippers… This old world has got some surprises for us yet.”
Of the Italian Dorando: “The great breed is not yet extinct.”
“…Fires of Fate, some of which is certainly the best dramatic work that I have ever done.”
On George Meredith: “I have the greatest possible admiration for him at his best, while his worst is such a handicap that I think it will drag four-fifths of his work to oblivion.”
“Rudyard Kipling I know far less than I should.”
Acclaims Barrie’s Window in Thrums. His “great play—one of the finest in the language—is of course The Admirable Crichton.” In prose Barrie had “the purest style of his age.”
Churchill was the second great modern stylist. Recommends his war memoirs.
“Wells, too, I have known long, and indeed I must have often entered the draper’s shop in which he was employed at Southsea, for the proprietor was a patient of mine…”
Praises Wells predictions but “he has never shown any perception of the true meaning of the psychic.”
WB Maxwell “the greatest novelist that we possess.”
See John Creedy, a “remarkable” short story by Grant Allen.
“Trollope and Mrs. Ward have the whole Victorian civilization dissected and preserved.”
See James Payne’s “Literary Reminiscences, and especially his Backwater of Life.”
“I have never heard more interesting talk than at these male gatherings… Few men are ever absolutely natural when there are women in the room.”
Doyle was 6’, 224 lbs.
Introduced skiing to Switzerland.
“If any superhuman demon treated us exactly as we treat the pheasants, we should begin to reconsider our views as to what is sport.”
“It was a deep antagonism on either side. They were not only sure of the war, but of the date. ‘It will be on the first pretext after the Kiel Canal is widened.’ The Kiel Canal was finished in June, 1914, and war came in August, so that they were not far wrong.”
See story called Danger for his vision of a war with Germany.
On the Italian front: “This dropping of explosives on the chance of hitting one soldier among fifty victims was surely the most monstrous development of the whole war, and was altogether German in its origin.”
“It was a most picturesque business. Far up in the Roccolana Valley I found the Alpini outposts, backed by artillery which had been brought into the most wonderful positions. They had taken 8-inch guns where a tourist could hardly take his knapsack. Neither side could ever make serious progress, but there were continual duels, gun against gun, or Alpini against Jaeger.”
“On the whole, however, it may be said that in the Austro-Italian war there was nothing which corresponded with the extreme bitterness of our Western conflict. The presence or absence of the Hun makes all the difference.”
On the Russian revolution: “…the whole course of events was very analogous to the French Revolution.”
“Each side of the causeway was lined by Australians, with their keen, clear-cut, falcon faces, and between lurched these heavy-jawed, beetle-browed, uncouth louts, new caught and staring round with bewildered eyes at their debonnaire captors… It was indeed farcical to think that these uniformed bumpkins represented the great military nation, while the gallant figures who lined the road belonged to the race which they had despised as being unwarlike.”
“There is a class of investigator who loves to wander round in a circle, and to drag you with him if you are weak enough to accept such guidance. He trips continually over his own brains, and can never persuade himself that the simple and obvious explanation is also the true one. His intellect becomes a positive curse to him, for he uses it to avoid the straight road and to fashion out some strange devious path which lands him at last in a quagmire, whilst the direct and honest mind has kept firmly to the highway of knowledge.”
On giving up fiction for Spiritualism: “I have abandoned my congenial and lucrative work…”
“I have recognized the style of a dead writer which no parodist could have copied, and which was written in his own handwriting.” Ok, this is his most convincing psychic proof. If an uneducated medium can impress Arthur Conan Doyle with his literary mimicry…
“Our descendants will never realize the terror of the horses…”
If the book is not solid gold, it is, as he would say, gold in clay. Who wouldn’t want to hear from one of the period’s brightest observers what the transition to automobiles was like, or read of a poor and preternaturally enterprising youth—forgoing his daily and much-needed mutton pie to buy books—rising to fame and fortune and hobnobbing with the president?
At the time of this autobiography, Doyle was 65—what he called the start of his “golden autumn.” But I’m glad he, unlike Kipling, didn’t wait much longer to write it, since he died only six years later. He had a remarkable life. He was kind of a minor Benjamin Franklin in the diversity of his achievements. (The book made me feel bad about my own life though.) Again like Franklin, Doyle had a real can-do spirit. The difference is his was met with a British regulatory state that continually nipped it in the bud.
There were so many close calls which could’ve robbed us of his work! A riding accident. Car crashes. A mortal fever. Poisonous desert creatures. A virulent outbreak among his patients that he only survived because he happened to try a new vaccine. A narrow miss of an exploding shell here, or an ambuscade there. A sort of wizard club which, though very tempted, he declined to join, and which would probably have derailed his artistic pursuits (earlier than Spiritualism did). Experimenting once with shooting in the air, Doyle almost killed a plein-air painter. And then what if that early acquaintance had never suggested Doyle try writing fiction in the first place? Of course all lives seem maddeningly chancy in retrospect.
“No. 410 holds one rigid arm and clenched fist in the air. We lower it, but up it springs menacing, aggressive. I put his mantle over him; but still, as we look back, we see the projection of that raised arm. So he met his end—somebody’s boy. Fair fight, open air, and a great cause—I know no better death.”
Doyle gives a good slice of life of the Boer war, and likes to use his autobiography as an opportunity to share his many, many opinions on everything and make woefully inaccurate predictions about the future. His involvement in the Great War (in which he lost his brother, son, and many others) dominates the latter portion of the book, and he gives a revealing glimpse into how and why that always baffling conflict began. The scale of destruction is mind-boggling whenever you read about it, but it adds extra layers to hear a person from that period talk as if it will always be remembered, and you know it will not, and as if it will never be equaled, and you know it will soon be dwarfed.
_______________________
Notes and quotes:
Thackeray, “tall, white-haired and affable,” visited his house when he was little.
“My father… may be said to be the father of polite caricature, for in the old days satire took the brutal shape of making the object grotesque in features and figure.”
“…these were the years when Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill were our chief philosophers, and that even the man in the street felt the strong sweeping current of their thought.” In a later audio interview he names Huxley and Ernst Haeckel as responsible for his early agnosticism.
“However, at dawn upon the third, the ship’s company took to the ice, and began to gather in its murderous harvest. It is brutal work, though not more brutal than that which goes on to supply every dinner-table in the country. And yet those glaring crimson pools upon the dazzling white of the icefields, under the peaceful silence of a blue Arctic sky, did seem a horrible intrusion.”
Credits his “inexhaustible store of energy” to the arctic air from his whaling days.
Posits that the sinking of Atlantis may have been so gradual that Hanno the Carthaginian witnessed the volcanic fires.
Earliest stories were “feeble echoes of Bret Harte.”
Called Southsea his second favorite city, after London.
“If one loses the explanation that this life is a spiritual chastening for another, and thinks that death ends all, and that this is our one experience, then it is impossible to sustain the goodness or the omnipotence of God.”
“…a voyage is bleak indeed if one has no conception to what port one is bound. I had laid aside the old charts as useless, and had quite despaired of ever finding a new one which would enable me to steer an intelligible course, save towards that mist which was all that my pilots, Huxley, Mill, Spencer and others, could see ahead of us.”
Of the stories in Captain of the Polestar: “Some of them are perhaps as good honest work as any that I have done.”
“I see Haggard too, first as the young spruce diplomatist, later as the worn and bearded man with strange vague tendencies to mysticism.”
Of Shaw: “It took a good man to write Saint Joan.”
The Physiologist’s Wife was “written when I was under the influence of Henry James.”
“I sat next to Anstey that night, who had just made a most deserved hit with his Vice Versa.”
Gives an account of the meeting with Wilde and an American publisher that gave birth to Dorian Grey and the second Sherlock novel.
On Human Personality, by a psychic researcher named Myers: “It may, in my opinion, take a permanent place in human literature like the Novum Organum or The Descent of Man or any other great root-book which has marked a date in human thought.
“I began to experiment in thought transference, and I found a fellow-researcher in Mr. Ball, a well-known architect in the town. Again and again, sitting behind him, I have drawn diagrams, and he in turn has made approximately the same figure. I showed beyond any doubt whatever that I could convey my thought without words.”
“It was there I learned to face an audience, which proved to be of the first importance for my life’s work. I was naturally of a very nervous, backward, self-distrustful disposition in such things and I have been told that the signal that I was about to join in the discussion was that the whole long bench on which I sat, with every one on it, used to shake with my emotion.”
Claims (dubiously) the innovation of a recurring character in short stories was his. This seems to be when Sherlock really took off in popularity. “Considering these various journals with their disconnected stories it had struck me that a single character running through a series, if it only engaged the attention of the reader, would bind that reader to that particular magazine. On the other hand, it had long seemed to me that the ordinary serial might be an impediment rather than a help to a magazine, since, sooner or later, one missed one number and afterwards it had lost all interest. Clearly the ideal compromise was a character which carried through, and yet instalments which were each complete in themselves, so that the purchaser was always sure that he could relish the whole contents of the magazine. I believe that I was the first to realize this and The Strand Magazine the first to put it into practice.”
“…The Great Shadow, a booklet which I should put near the front of my work for merit.”
Includes a great parody of Sherlock by JM Barrie.
“My only criticism of the films is that they introduce telephones, motor cars and other luxuries of which the Victorian Holmes never dreamed.”
Called The Adventure of the Second Stain one of the neatest of his stories.
Victor Hugo believed in psychic phenomena.
“It was during the years roughly from 1888 to 1893 that Rudyard Kipling, James Stephen Phillips, Watson, Grant Allen, Wells, Barrie, Bernard Shaw, H. A. Jones, Pinero, Marie Corelli, Stanley Weyman, Anthony Hope, Hall Caine, and a whole list of others were winning their spurs.”
Charles Reade “was really a great innovator as well as a most dramatic writer, for it was he who first introduced realism and founded his stories upon carefully arranged documents. He was the literary father of Zola. George Eliot has never appealed to me much, for I like my effects in a less leisurely fashion; but Trollope also I consider to be a very original writer…”
On my favorite newspaperman Robert Barr: “a volcanic Anglo- or rather Scot-American, with a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest of natures underneath it all. He was one of the best raconteurs I have ever known, and as a writer I have always felt that he did not quite come into his own.”
Of the Raffles stories by his brother-in-law: “…there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal the hero.”
To America: “…you will find that there is only one which can at all understand your ways and your aspirations, or will have the least sympathy. That is the mother country which you are now so fond of insulting.”
On Egypt: “Of all the singular experiences of this most venerable land, surely this rebuilding at the hands of a little group of bustling, clear-headed Anglo-Saxons is the most extraordinary.”
Check out his story A Desert Drama.
Doyle was recently not deemed important enough to preserve his Undershaw home. It’s now a facility for mentally disabled kids.
On the romance and camaraderie of war: “When the millennium comes the world will gain much, but it will lose its greatest thrill.”
“…the pig screams horribly. I had rather see a man killed.”
Resented the idea that his spiritualism was the result of his son’s death.
“…the only place for swords, lances and all the frippery of the past was a museum. Bayonets also are very questionable.”
“Sir Nigel represents in my opinion my high-water mark in literature.”
“…such judicial crimes are not, I am convinced, done with impunity even to the most humble. Somehow—somewhere, there comes a national punishment in return.” Doyle had helped free two men from prison.
On spotting a sea monster: “It was exactly like a young ichthyosaurus, about 4 feet long, with thin neck and tail, and four marked side-flippers… This old world has got some surprises for us yet.”
Of the Italian Dorando: “The great breed is not yet extinct.”
“…Fires of Fate, some of which is certainly the best dramatic work that I have ever done.”
On George Meredith: “I have the greatest possible admiration for him at his best, while his worst is such a handicap that I think it will drag four-fifths of his work to oblivion.”
“Rudyard Kipling I know far less than I should.”
Acclaims Barrie’s Window in Thrums. His “great play—one of the finest in the language—is of course The Admirable Crichton.” In prose Barrie had “the purest style of his age.”
Churchill was the second great modern stylist. Recommends his war memoirs.
“Wells, too, I have known long, and indeed I must have often entered the draper’s shop in which he was employed at Southsea, for the proprietor was a patient of mine…”
Praises Wells predictions but “he has never shown any perception of the true meaning of the psychic.”
WB Maxwell “the greatest novelist that we possess.”
See John Creedy, a “remarkable” short story by Grant Allen.
“Trollope and Mrs. Ward have the whole Victorian civilization dissected and preserved.”
See James Payne’s “Literary Reminiscences, and especially his Backwater of Life.”
“I have never heard more interesting talk than at these male gatherings… Few men are ever absolutely natural when there are women in the room.”
Doyle was 6’, 224 lbs.
Introduced skiing to Switzerland.
“If any superhuman demon treated us exactly as we treat the pheasants, we should begin to reconsider our views as to what is sport.”
“It was a deep antagonism on either side. They were not only sure of the war, but of the date. ‘It will be on the first pretext after the Kiel Canal is widened.’ The Kiel Canal was finished in June, 1914, and war came in August, so that they were not far wrong.”
See story called Danger for his vision of a war with Germany.
On the Italian front: “This dropping of explosives on the chance of hitting one soldier among fifty victims was surely the most monstrous development of the whole war, and was altogether German in its origin.”
“It was a most picturesque business. Far up in the Roccolana Valley I found the Alpini outposts, backed by artillery which had been brought into the most wonderful positions. They had taken 8-inch guns where a tourist could hardly take his knapsack. Neither side could ever make serious progress, but there were continual duels, gun against gun, or Alpini against Jaeger.”
“On the whole, however, it may be said that in the Austro-Italian war there was nothing which corresponded with the extreme bitterness of our Western conflict. The presence or absence of the Hun makes all the difference.”
On the Russian revolution: “…the whole course of events was very analogous to the French Revolution.”
“Each side of the causeway was lined by Australians, with their keen, clear-cut, falcon faces, and between lurched these heavy-jawed, beetle-browed, uncouth louts, new caught and staring round with bewildered eyes at their debonnaire captors… It was indeed farcical to think that these uniformed bumpkins represented the great military nation, while the gallant figures who lined the road belonged to the race which they had despised as being unwarlike.”
“There is a class of investigator who loves to wander round in a circle, and to drag you with him if you are weak enough to accept such guidance. He trips continually over his own brains, and can never persuade himself that the simple and obvious explanation is also the true one. His intellect becomes a positive curse to him, for he uses it to avoid the straight road and to fashion out some strange devious path which lands him at last in a quagmire, whilst the direct and honest mind has kept firmly to the highway of knowledge.”
On giving up fiction for Spiritualism: “I have abandoned my congenial and lucrative work…”
“I have recognized the style of a dead writer which no parodist could have copied, and which was written in his own handwriting.” Ok, this is his most convincing psychic proof. If an uneducated medium can impress Arthur Conan Doyle with his literary mimicry…
November 29, 2010
The Memories of Conan Doyle are one of the best pieces of this genre that I have ever read. In the book, Doyle analyzes his life in detail - lineage (Irish descent), family (life with his first and second wives, death of his brother and only son in World War), literature career (Sherlock Holmes stories and historical novels), sports interests (golf, boxing, cricket, football, billyard) ,travels (North pole, Egypt, America, etc), influences on the masterpieces that he wrote (Voltaire Scott, Edgar Poe,Macolaulay, and others), indirect participation in the Great Boer War (he served as a doctor in the British hospital for injured soldiers in South Africa) and the First World War (it was Doyle who first created a volunteer army during the war),and one of the main aspects of his life - spiritualism, which he believed and tried to prove is a veritable science that is not quiet observed and explored by the scientists yet. The book is very informative from the historical point of view. In addition to that, it is full of humour and wit. Therefore, it deserves a place among the world's best autobiographies.
November 22, 2018
I was in the 8th grade at the time and picked an autobiography at semi-random for an oral report. Little did I realize that this would turn out to be so long, yet also so fascinating. I ended up giving a 15min report to my class that got cut off at the 50minute mark as the class ended. Safe to say I've been a huge ACD fan ever since. He led an amazing life of adventure, in a very British way.
September 30, 2023
Que vida más interesante tuvo Arthur Conan Doyle, la verdad fue más que Holmes aunque Holmes sea más grande que el. Está claro que disfruto de la vida a lo máximo. Lo que hace interesante el libro es cuando habla de la guerra de los Boer y la primera guerra mundial, ya que estuvo en las dos. A su vez sus ideas políticas es interesante verlas cien años después. Es una visión muy interesante de la vida de un hombre que la disfruto.
February 20, 2026
I have to admit, I did not expect this autobiography to be this good. What do you expect from the life of a writer? But I was up to a surprise.
Sir Arthur Doyle (born in 1859) was a Scottish writer who famously created the character Sherlock Holmes. From a young age, he found his escape in books particularly adventure stories and by his early teens was already writing his own stories. Doyle was trained as a doctor his degree from Edinburgh university.
While a medical doctor, he will travel the world going through various adventures and wars. He worked as a doctor on a whaler ship in the Arctic seas in the north pole and even visited west Africa. Later he would travel to Egypt, America , Istanbul and South Africa. He worked as a medical in the Great Boer War in South Africa and traveled across multiple lines in World War I. He created a volunteer army to serve in WWI. Interestingly, he clearly saw the change in the art of wars and believed the rifle and machine guns were the "supreme arbiter in war" and that swords and bayonets belonged in a museum.
In personal life, he would marry twice (losing his first wife due to illness) and would also lose a son in WWI. Doyle was a man of intense action. He participated in many sports including boxing, cricket, and was the first to introduce skiing for long journeys in Switzerland. He met many famous people including President Theodore Roosevelt who he described as one of the "raciest talkers" he ever met.
Doyle had a strong interest in the psychic research. He immersed himself in this spiritual research and was part of his life throughout. He recounts investigating a haunted house for the Society of Psychic Research where he heard deafening unexplained noises and years later the skeleton of a child was discovered in the garden there suggesting a tragic history. He also investigated strange cases like a woman who received physical marks from a snake shaped ring after a nightmare. These experiences cemented his belief in the limitations of what we call matter and the need for spirituality.
There were many passages of wisdom, here are some:
The world, not the family, gets the fruits of genius.
In the evenings, home and books were my sole consolation, save for week-end holidays.
Half the beauties of Nature are lost through over-familiarity.
Have a care, young authors, have a care, or your worst enemy will be your early self!
The lonely hero is the man to be admired.
I think a man should know all sides of life, and he has missed a very essential side if he has not played his part in commerce.
Sport is what a man does, not what a horse does.
They say that every form of knowledge comes useful sooner or later.
To be led and not to lead was most restful.
Human plans are vain things, and it is better for the tool to lie passive until the great hand moves it once more.
Overall, very good autobiography
Sir Arthur Doyle (born in 1859) was a Scottish writer who famously created the character Sherlock Holmes. From a young age, he found his escape in books particularly adventure stories and by his early teens was already writing his own stories. Doyle was trained as a doctor his degree from Edinburgh university.
While a medical doctor, he will travel the world going through various adventures and wars. He worked as a doctor on a whaler ship in the Arctic seas in the north pole and even visited west Africa. Later he would travel to Egypt, America , Istanbul and South Africa. He worked as a medical in the Great Boer War in South Africa and traveled across multiple lines in World War I. He created a volunteer army to serve in WWI. Interestingly, he clearly saw the change in the art of wars and believed the rifle and machine guns were the "supreme arbiter in war" and that swords and bayonets belonged in a museum.
In personal life, he would marry twice (losing his first wife due to illness) and would also lose a son in WWI. Doyle was a man of intense action. He participated in many sports including boxing, cricket, and was the first to introduce skiing for long journeys in Switzerland. He met many famous people including President Theodore Roosevelt who he described as one of the "raciest talkers" he ever met.
Doyle had a strong interest in the psychic research. He immersed himself in this spiritual research and was part of his life throughout. He recounts investigating a haunted house for the Society of Psychic Research where he heard deafening unexplained noises and years later the skeleton of a child was discovered in the garden there suggesting a tragic history. He also investigated strange cases like a woman who received physical marks from a snake shaped ring after a nightmare. These experiences cemented his belief in the limitations of what we call matter and the need for spirituality.
There were many passages of wisdom, here are some:
The world, not the family, gets the fruits of genius.
In the evenings, home and books were my sole consolation, save for week-end holidays.
Half the beauties of Nature are lost through over-familiarity.
Have a care, young authors, have a care, or your worst enemy will be your early self!
The lonely hero is the man to be admired.
I think a man should know all sides of life, and he has missed a very essential side if he has not played his part in commerce.
Sport is what a man does, not what a horse does.
They say that every form of knowledge comes useful sooner or later.
To be led and not to lead was most restful.
Human plans are vain things, and it is better for the tool to lie passive until the great hand moves it once more.
Overall, very good autobiography
January 22, 2026
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was, of course, a brilliant and prolific author. He didn’t care too much about his most famous creation, but valued his historic novels that only his diehard fans read nowadays. In some sense he was the embodiment of Englishness, although he was of Irish descent and born and raised in Scotland. He was a doctor who practiced his profession not only in the comforts of Victorian England but also on a whaling ship in the Arctic, on a merchant ship to Africa, and in the middle of the horrors of the Boer War. He was a multi-talented sportsman, an advocate of women’s rights, a champion of those who suffered from miscarriage of justice, a war correspondent (of sorts) and a propagandist. Twice he tried to become an elected politician. And, from his point of view, he was first and foremost a spiritualist. He really had an amazing life, and it would make a wonderful TV series.
His autobiography, Memories and Adventures, was first serialised in The Strand magazine in 1923–1924. At this late stage of his career he was mostly promoting spiritualism and quite literally off with the (Cottingley) fairies, but he was still writing good stuff too, like some of the last Holmes stories, the two professor Challenger short stories, and The Maracot Deep. So although his early and some mid-career work is what he is known for today, he was a highly entertaining author throughout his long career.
Memories and Adventures is not the most reliable or thorough biography of ACDs life, but it’s certainly interesting. Doyle entirely skips the more problematic parts of his life, like his father’s alcoholism, the curious character of Bryan Charles Waller, and the Cottingley fairies. Spiritualism pops up here and there throughout the book, but luckily it’s mostly reserved to the end of the book (apparently at the request of the publisher).
Although his life was a truly remarkable one, and ACD was a great writer even in the 1920s, somehow Memories and Adventures didn’t quite manage to capture my attention. He didn’t tell much about the writing process or his extensive research that went into his work. I don’t think he ever mentioned his keen interest in palaeontology – he was a fossil collector who had also found an iguanodon footprint, and was highly fascinated by the Piltdown Man (which later turned out to be an elaborate hoax). More or less the only hints about his scientific interests come from his praise of the famous zoologist Ray Lankester (not that ACD really tells who Lankester was, you just have to know). As was common at the time, ACD uses just the last names of many if not the most of the people he talks about. As I’m not British or particularly interested in the political history in Britain during the late 1800s and early 1900s, many of the names he mentions are entirely meaningless to me. All this name-dropping becomes a bit irritating. A good annotated version of Memories and Adventures would be handy.
The propagandist tones in the chapters about the Boer War and especially World War I (or the Great War, as the Brits like to call it), where he lost many of his relatives, are in places slightly jarring. I’m not a fan of nationalism or war history, so the glorification of the great battles doesn’t really work that well for me.
Memories and Adventures shows what ACD wanted us to know about his incredible life. As a book, however, it was a bit of a disappointment. Fascinating, but not captivating.
A word of warning about this particular paperback edition that at least Amazon sells for quite a reasonable price: it’s horrible, don’t buy it! It doesn’t even have page numbers, and all special characters like dashes or pound and dollar signs are replaced by white questions marks inside black boxes. It looks awful and is annoying to read. And if the cover gets a bit wet, the colours come off. Memories and Adventures is readily available as a free e-book, so read that instead, or buy a decent reprint (or an old copy if you can find one), not this terrible abomination.
3.25/5
His autobiography, Memories and Adventures, was first serialised in The Strand magazine in 1923–1924. At this late stage of his career he was mostly promoting spiritualism and quite literally off with the (Cottingley) fairies, but he was still writing good stuff too, like some of the last Holmes stories, the two professor Challenger short stories, and The Maracot Deep. So although his early and some mid-career work is what he is known for today, he was a highly entertaining author throughout his long career.
Memories and Adventures is not the most reliable or thorough biography of ACDs life, but it’s certainly interesting. Doyle entirely skips the more problematic parts of his life, like his father’s alcoholism, the curious character of Bryan Charles Waller, and the Cottingley fairies. Spiritualism pops up here and there throughout the book, but luckily it’s mostly reserved to the end of the book (apparently at the request of the publisher).
Although his life was a truly remarkable one, and ACD was a great writer even in the 1920s, somehow Memories and Adventures didn’t quite manage to capture my attention. He didn’t tell much about the writing process or his extensive research that went into his work. I don’t think he ever mentioned his keen interest in palaeontology – he was a fossil collector who had also found an iguanodon footprint, and was highly fascinated by the Piltdown Man (which later turned out to be an elaborate hoax). More or less the only hints about his scientific interests come from his praise of the famous zoologist Ray Lankester (not that ACD really tells who Lankester was, you just have to know). As was common at the time, ACD uses just the last names of many if not the most of the people he talks about. As I’m not British or particularly interested in the political history in Britain during the late 1800s and early 1900s, many of the names he mentions are entirely meaningless to me. All this name-dropping becomes a bit irritating. A good annotated version of Memories and Adventures would be handy.
The propagandist tones in the chapters about the Boer War and especially World War I (or the Great War, as the Brits like to call it), where he lost many of his relatives, are in places slightly jarring. I’m not a fan of nationalism or war history, so the glorification of the great battles doesn’t really work that well for me.
Memories and Adventures shows what ACD wanted us to know about his incredible life. As a book, however, it was a bit of a disappointment. Fascinating, but not captivating.
A word of warning about this particular paperback edition that at least Amazon sells for quite a reasonable price: it’s horrible, don’t buy it! It doesn’t even have page numbers, and all special characters like dashes or pound and dollar signs are replaced by white questions marks inside black boxes. It looks awful and is annoying to read. And if the cover gets a bit wet, the colours come off. Memories and Adventures is readily available as a free e-book, so read that instead, or buy a decent reprint (or an old copy if you can find one), not this terrible abomination.
3.25/5
July 10, 2022
Wow, ACD really led an adventurous life. Solider, sailor, harpooner, doctor, detective, and spiritualist. When I first started this book I had fears that it might be a dry, Victorian affair, but due to the many people and places he encountered, there were indeed many memories and adventures to share. The highlights for me were his experiences aboard a whaling ship, as well his soldiering. I would recommend to any Sherlock Holmes fan to learn more about his creator.
October 25, 2013
It's depressing to realize that the creator of one's favorite, rational and unsentimental fictional character (Sherlock, Sherlock!) believed in ghost, fairies and the Empire. This in addition (deduced from this autobiography) to apparently having been an utter bore. Sigh.
February 11, 2022
I found this book very disappointing. I did not expect Conan Doyle to so throughly fulfill every Victorian cliches. I know every man is product of his time but I thought the creator of Sherlock Holmes to have a bit more of a twist to him.
June 29, 2024
strange life and beliefs
January 17, 2020
These memoirs are written in ACD’s signature style: clear, fun, and easy to read. His life was as adventurous as his short stories and novels. Something was embellished, something glossed over, and something omitted, but on the whole it was a candid account.
- For example, he is graphic and shockingly straightforward, writing about the severe corporal punishment he suffered as a boy at Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school he attended, and which made him cast off his Roman-Catholic faith.
- However, he glosses over the fact of his father’s alcoholism and how terribly it affected the Doyle family. Mary Doyle had to raise seven children single-handedly in poverty while caring after her incapable husband. But ACD writes of his father sympathetically and doesn’t go into detail regarding Charles Doyle’s affliction.
- He creates myths which mislead his readers and biographers, like his abandoning medicine because ‘not one single patient had ever crossed the threshold of my room’ when in fact he was exhausted by treating patients during daytime and writing at night and eventually had to choose.
- While giving quite a lot of details about his first marriage and children born in it, he is practically silent about his second wife whom he adored and his younger offspring whom he doted on.
He is a story-teller, so his recounting is better be taken with a grain of salt.
I found his youthful experiences especially relatable. One can see him as a real living person, interrupting his studies to work as a doctor’s apprentice, and later as a ship’s surgeon on an Arctic expedition which nearly cost him his life due to his own recklessness. His struggles while setting his first practice in a new town are familiar to many of us in the 21st century, when you’re perpetually broke and in a desperate need of a job which doesn’t come your way.
The latter part of the memoirs covering the period after he received recognition and fame was disappointing. The real man disappears; instead there’s a larger-than-life public figure and name-dropping, as if he deliberately retreats behind that veneer to protect his privacy.
Anyways, the book is definitely worth reading.
- For example, he is graphic and shockingly straightforward, writing about the severe corporal punishment he suffered as a boy at Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school he attended, and which made him cast off his Roman-Catholic faith.
- However, he glosses over the fact of his father’s alcoholism and how terribly it affected the Doyle family. Mary Doyle had to raise seven children single-handedly in poverty while caring after her incapable husband. But ACD writes of his father sympathetically and doesn’t go into detail regarding Charles Doyle’s affliction.
- He creates myths which mislead his readers and biographers, like his abandoning medicine because ‘not one single patient had ever crossed the threshold of my room’ when in fact he was exhausted by treating patients during daytime and writing at night and eventually had to choose.
- While giving quite a lot of details about his first marriage and children born in it, he is practically silent about his second wife whom he adored and his younger offspring whom he doted on.
He is a story-teller, so his recounting is better be taken with a grain of salt.
I found his youthful experiences especially relatable. One can see him as a real living person, interrupting his studies to work as a doctor’s apprentice, and later as a ship’s surgeon on an Arctic expedition which nearly cost him his life due to his own recklessness. His struggles while setting his first practice in a new town are familiar to many of us in the 21st century, when you’re perpetually broke and in a desperate need of a job which doesn’t come your way.
The latter part of the memoirs covering the period after he received recognition and fame was disappointing. The real man disappears; instead there’s a larger-than-life public figure and name-dropping, as if he deliberately retreats behind that veneer to protect his privacy.
Anyways, the book is definitely worth reading.
March 27, 2022
Not an autobiography as such this is a selective collection of reminiscences by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Although famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes he was much more than just an author of detective stories. His account of visiting the front lines in the First World War dressed in the invented uniform of a deputy lieutenant of Surrey is amazing for instance. He certainly had an adventurous life but he gives little away about the inner man or his family life other than to stress his crusade for Spiritualism.
Although famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes he was much more than just an author of detective stories. His account of visiting the front lines in the First World War dressed in the invented uniform of a deputy lieutenant of Surrey is amazing for instance. He certainly had an adventurous life but he gives little away about the inner man or his family life other than to stress his crusade for Spiritualism.
September 22, 2023
The reminiscences of Arthur Conan Doyle, most famous for being the author of the Holmes and Watson saga, this book is quite readable and more entertaining than many autobiographies. Truth to tell, though, his recorded memories are a bit selective, saying very little about his second marriage and his children.
He had a very adventurous life, what with being employed on a whaling ship in his younger years, being a war correspondent during the Boer War, and doing a good deal of traveling. He also championed many political and legal causes, including the Edalji case.
Recommended.
He had a very adventurous life, what with being employed on a whaling ship in his younger years, being a war correspondent during the Boer War, and doing a good deal of traveling. He also championed many political and legal causes, including the Edalji case.
Recommended.
April 28, 2026
It took me awhile to read this as I only read Kindle books on an app on my phone when I'm travelling or in waiting rooms. As an insight into 19thc lives, it has some very interesting interludes. Doyle met some interesting people, and one of his friends was JM Barrie. Doyle was involved in the Boar War and toured the various fronts of WW1 (students of WW1 might find his accounts illuminating). Of course there is a fair amount of jingoism and the final chapter about spiritualism is a little sad.
June 18, 2020
Very good memoirs of one of the most famous authors. Interestingly, there is very little in this book that relates to his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, or any of his other fictional novels. I enjoy reading Doyle -- he has a fluid, easy-going style that is very descriptive. And he certainly had an exciting and adventurous life!
July 17, 2024
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. As much an insight into a Victorian mind as a memoir. His first wife is introduced with a sentence and maybe a paragraph talking of how they met, then shortly after two full pages dedicated to talking about camels. If he hears about a war he wants to dash off to the frontlines and usually does. A fun read.
March 12, 2023
Estic descobrint que m’agrada llegir biografies, així que dec ser un tafaner.
També que aquest senyor no em cau massa bé… grans qualitats i grans defectes, suposo que en tots dos casos propis de la seva època.
Tampoco tenía abuela…
També que aquest senyor no em cau massa bé… grans qualitats i grans defectes, suposo que en tots dos casos propis de la seva època.
Tampoco tenía abuela…
December 2, 2023
The more I read of his work, both fiction and non fiction, the more you see of this remarkable, adventurous life. The stories weave through many momentous moments of british history, including figures of great importance and fame.
August 27, 2022
Actually pretty good
September 24, 2023
I'm not a big fan of (auto)biographies but this book was great.
June 6, 2025
2.5 stars
December 29, 2011
yes, Sherlock Holmes stories are fascinating, but the autobiography of the author himself is just as interesting!
Could use better pictures tho... (and Sherlock related pics eat up something like 20 pages!)
Could use better pictures tho... (and Sherlock related pics eat up something like 20 pages!)
March 13, 2016
Too much about how wonderful the Brits are. "The good Tommy soldier". The "dirty" Hun (& Kaffa's & Fuzzy-wazzies). So arrogant and elitist. :-( Maybe a sign of the times?
Didn't realise Doyle was so much into the occult & mediums.
Didn't realise Doyle was so much into the occult & mediums.
March 10, 2007
Sherlock Holmes is a must-have for every library
April 8, 2017
Afús, un poco truño y bastante mal escrito, como a desgana.
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