The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

BIOGRAPHY

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh into a prosperous Irish family. 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 Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery qualifications from Edinburgh in 1881 and an M.D. in 1885 upon completing his thesis. He worked as a surgeon on a whaling boat and also as a medical officer on a steamer travelling between Liverpool and West Africa. He then settled in Portsmouth on the English south coast and divided his time between medicine and writing.

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. Its success encouraged Conan Doyle to write more stories involving Holmes but, in 1893, Conan Doyle killed off Holmes, hoping to concentrate on more serious writing. A public outcry later made him resurrect Holmes. 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, its companion piece, Sir Nigel, and his adventures of the Napoleonic war hero Brigadier Gerard and the 19th-century skeptical scientist Professor George Edward Challenger.

Other aspects of Conan Doyle’s medical education and experiences appear in his semi-autobiographical novels, The Firm of Girdlestone and The Stark Munro Letters, 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. 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.

When his passions ran high, Conan Doyle also turned to nonfiction. His subjects include military writings, The Great Boer War and The British Campaign in France and Flanders 1915, the Belgian atrocities in the The Crime of the Congo, 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. He donated the majority of his literary efforts and profits later in his life to this campaign, beginning with The New Revelation and The Vital Message. He later chronicled his travels in supporting the spiritualist cause in The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, Our American Adventure, Our Second American Adventure, and Our African Winter (Duckworth Discoverers). He discussed other spiritualist issues in his The Case for Spirit Photography, Pheneas Speaks, and a two-volume The History of Spiritualism. 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, 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 detailed what he valued most in life in his autobiography, Memories And Adventures, and the importance that books held for him in Through The Magic Door.

Conan Doyle died in Windlesham, his home in Crowborough, Sussex, of a heart attack on July 7, 1930. 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. (Copied from The BBC and Encyclopedia Britannica.)

ADDITIONAL BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

There is extensive biographical information on Conan Doyle on arthurconandoyle.com and The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia.

AUTHOR'S BIBLIOGRAPHY

A list of Conan Doyle's writings are listed here.

FURTHER READING

ARTICLES
Adultery, my dear Watson

How Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle cracked the case of the tuberculosis ‘remedy’

Arthur Conan Doyle, Spiritualism, and Fairies


From the Stethoscope to the Magnifying Glass: Sherlock Holmes and Medicine in Late 19th Century Britain

WEBSITES
The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate

The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

SUBJECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books about Arthur Conan Doyle

TRIVIA
Arthur Conan Doyle: 19 things you didn't know