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Arthur Conan Doyle biography

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Quick Facts

  • NAME: Arthur Conan Doyle
  • OCCUPATION: Author
  • BIRTH DATE: May 22, 1859
  • DEATH DATE: July 07, 1930
  • EDUCATION: University of Edinburgh's Medical School
  • PLACE OF BIRTH: Edinburgh, Scotland
  • PLACE OF DEATH: Crowborough, United Kingdom
more about Arthur

Best Known For

Scottish writer and spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the detective Sherlock Holmes--one of the most vivid and enduring characters in English fiction.


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Synopsis

Born May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for his creation of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who was modeled after one of his professors in medical school. Conan Doyle himself, however, viewed his most important efforts to be his campaign in support of spiritualism, and wrote many books and essays on the subject in addition to his other works.

Contents

Quotes

Where there is no imagination there is no horror.

– Arthur Conan Doyle

Profile

(born May 22, 1859, Edinburgh, Scotland—died July 7, 1930, Crowborough, Sussex, England) Scottish writer best known for his creation of the detective Sherlock Holmes—one of the most vivid and enduring characters in English fiction.

Conan Doyle, the second of Charles Altamont and Mary Foley Doyle's 10 children, began seven years of Jesuit education in Lancashire, England, in 1868. After an additional year of schooling in Feldkirch, Austria, Conan Doyle returned to Edinburgh. 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 his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery qualifications from Edinburgh in 1881 and an M.D. in 1885, upon completing his thesis, “An Essay upon the Vasomotor Changes in Tabes Dorsalis.”

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. Other aspects of Conan Doyle's medical education and experiences appear in his semiautobiographical novels, The Firm of Girdlestone (1890) and The Stark Munro Letters (1895), 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 (1889). 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.

Although public clamour prompted him to continue writing Sherlock Holmes adventures through 1926, 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 (1891), its companion piece, Sir Nigel (1906), and his adventures of the Napoleonic war hero Brigadier Gerard and the 19th-century skeptical scientist Professor George Edward Challenger.

When his passions ran high, Conan Doyle also turned to nonfiction. His subjects include military writings, The Great Boer War (1900) and The British Campaign in France and Flanders, 6 vol. (1916–20), the Belgian atrocities in the Congo in The Crime of the Congo (1909)

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