The Quest for Sherlock Holmes: Biographical Study of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

by Owen Dudley Edwards

Traces the life of the Scottish writer and discusses the influence of his childhood and education on his fiction writing.

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle? Yes, that was the name by which the future creator of Sherlock Holmes was baptised in Edinburgh in 1859. As Holmes would say, the discovery is in itself a trivial one, but it does symbplise that this book presents a new story and a new character. Using extensive new evidence in Edinburgh, Stonyhurst (where Arthur Conan Doyle went to school) and elsewhere, Owen Dudley Edwards shows how Conan Doyle's boyhood experiences shaped his literary attitudes and much of the genius of his writing.

Genres: Biography

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Owen Dudley Edwards is Reader in Commonwealth and American History at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He is the general editor of the Oxford Sherlock Holmes series, and is a recognised expert on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde, about each of whom he has written.

The son of Professor Robert Dudley Edwards, and brother to the Irish writer, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Owen Dudley Edwards attended Belvedere College, Dublin, University College, Dublin, and The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1966 he married Barbara Balbirnie Lee. They have three children.