Arthur Conan Doyle was born on
22 May 1859, in
Edinburgh, Scotland, to an English father,
Charles Altamont Doyle, and an Irish mother, Mary Foley, who had married in 1855. Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound
surname is uncertain.). 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". However, other sources (such as the 1901 census) indicate that Conan Doyle's surname was "Doyle", and that the form "Conan Doyle" was only used as a surname in his later years.</bgref> Conan Doyle's father was an artist, as were his paternal uncles (one of whom was
Richard Doyle), and his paternal grandfather
John Doyle.
Conan Doyle was sent to the
Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school St Marys Hall,
Stonyhurst, at the age of nine. He then went on to
Stonyhurst College, but by the time he left the school in 1875, he had rejected
Christianity to become an
agnostic.
From 1876 to 1881 he studied
medicine at the
University of Edinburgh, including a period working in the town of
Aston (now a district of
Birmingham). While studying, he also began writing short stories; his first published story appeared in
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20. Following his term at university, he served as a ship's doctor on a voyage to the
West African coast, and then in 1882 he set up a practice in
Plymouth. He completed his
doctorate on the subject of
tabes dorsalis in 1885.
In 1882 he took up medical practice in
Portsmouth. The practice was initially not very successful; while waiting for patients, he again began writing stories. His first significant work was
A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in
Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor,
Joseph Bell. Future short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the English
Strand Magazine. Interestingly,
Rudyard Kipling congratulated Conan Doyle on his success, asking "Could this be my old friend, Dr. Joe?" Sherlock Holmes, however, was even more closely modelled after the famous
Edgar Allan Poe character,
C. Auguste Dupin.
While living in
Southsea he played
football for an amateur side (that disbanded in 1894), Portsmouth Athletic Football Club, and not
Portsmouth F.C., as is the common myth.
In 1885 he married Louisa (or Louise) Hawkins, known as "Touie", who suffered from
tuberculosis and died on
July 4, 1906. He married Jean Leckie in 1907, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897 but had maintained a
platonic relationship with her out of loyalty to his first wife. Conan Doyle had five children, two with his first wife (
Mary Louise (born 1889) and Alleyne
Kingsley (1892–1918), and three with his second wife (
Jean Lena Annette, Denis Percy Stewart (
March 17, 1909–March 9, 1955), second husband in 1936 of
Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani (circa 1910–
February 19, 1987) (former sister-in-law of
Barbara Hutton), and
Adrian Malcolm).
In 1890 Conan Doyle studied the
eye in
Vienna; he moved to
London in 1891 to set up a practice as an
ophthalmologist. He wrote in his
autobiography that not a single patient crossed his door. This gave him more time for writing, and in November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, saying, "You may do what you deem fit, but the crowds will not take this lightheartedly." In December 1893, he did so in order to dedicate more of his time to more "important" works (his
historical novels).
Holmes and
Moriarty apparently plunged to their deaths together down a waterfall in the story, "
The Final Problem". Public outcry led him to bring the character back; Conan Doyle returned to the story in "The Adventure of the Empty House", with the explanation that only Moriarty had fallen but, since Holmes had other dangerous enemies, he had arranged to be temporarily "dead" also. Holmes ultimately appears in a total of 56
short stories and four Conan Doyle
novels (he has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors).
Following the
Boer War in
South Africa at the turn of the 20th century and the condemnation from around the world over the United Kingdom's conduct, Conan Doyle wrote a short pamphlet titled,
The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which justified the UK's role in the Boer war, and was widely translated.
Conan Doyle believed that it was this pamphlet that resulted in 1902 in his being
knighted and appointed Deputy-Lieutenant of
Surrey. He also in 1900 wrote the longer book,
The Great Boer War. During the early years of the 20th century, Sir Arthur twice ran for Parliament as a
Liberal Unionist, once in Edinburgh and once in the
Hawick Burghs, but although he received a respectable vote he was not elected.
Conan Doyle was involved in the campaign for the reform of the
Congo Free State, led by the journalist
E. D. Morel and the diplomat
Roger Casement. He wrote
The Crime of the Congo in 1909, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors in that country. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, taking inspiration from them for two of the main characters in the novel,
The Lost World (1912).
He broke with both when Morel became one of the leaders of the
pacifist movement during the
First World War, and when Casement committed
treason against the UK during the
Easter Rising out of conviction for his
Irish nationalist views. Conan Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save Casement from the
death penalty, arguing that he had been driven mad and was not responsible for his actions.
Conan Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice, and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two imprisoned men being released. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named
George Edalji, who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.
It was partially as a result of this case that the
Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907, so not only did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped establish a way to correct other
miscarriages of justice. The story of Conan Doyle and Edalji is told in fictional form in
Julian Barnes' 2005
novel, Arthur & George.
The second case, that of
Oscar Slater, a
German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in
Glasgow in 1908, excited Conan Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense that Slater was framed.
After the death of his wife Louisa in 1906, and the deaths of his son Kingsley, his brother, his two brothers-in-law, and his two nephews in
World War I, Conan Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting
Spiritualism and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave.
According to the
History Channel program
Houdini: Unlocking the Mystery (which briefly explored the friendship between the two), Conan Doyle became involved with Spiritualism after the death of his own son during the
First World War. Kingsley Doyle died from pneumonia in October 1917, which he contracted during his year plus convalescence after being seriously wounded during the disastrous 1916
Battle of the Somme. The elder Doyle became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a
Professor Challenger novel on the subject,
The Land of Mist.
One of the odder aspects of this period of his life was his book,
The Coming of the Fairies (1921). He was apparently convinced of the veracity of the
Cottingley fairy photographs, which he reproduced in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits.
In his
The History of Spiritualism (1926) Conan Doyle highly praised the
psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations produced by
Eusapia Palladino and
Mina "Margery" Crandon, based on the investigations of duped scientists and conjurers who deeply desired to encounter psychic phenomena and refused to listen to sceptical and well-informed scientists and conjurers.
His work on this topic was one of the reasons that one of his short story collections,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, was banned in the
Soviet Union in 1929 for supposed
occultism. This ban was later lifted. Russian actor
Vasily Livanov later received an
Order of the British Empire for his portrayal of
Sherlock Holmes.
Conan Doyle was friends for a time with the American magician
Harry Houdini, who himself became a prominent
opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920s following the death of his own beloved mother. Although Houdini insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery (and consistently attempted to expose them as frauds), Conan Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers, a view expressed in Conan Doyle's
The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini was apparently unable to convince Conan Doyle that his feats were simply magic tricks, leading to a bitter, public, falling-out between the two. Doyle was totally stunned when Houdini pulled off his thumb and then replaced it.
Richard Milner, an
American historian of science, has presented a case that Conan Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the
Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit
hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Conan Doyle had a motive, namely revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics, and that
The Lost World contains several encrypted clues regarding his involvement in the hoax.
Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book
Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how Conan Doyle left, throughout his writings, open clues that related to hidden and suppressed aspects of his mentality.
Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the family garden on
July 7, 1930. He soon died of his
heart attack, aged 71, and is buried in the Church Yard at
Minstead in the
New Forest, Hampshire, England. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful." The epitaph on his gravestone reads:
<p align=center>
STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS</p>
Undershaw, the home Conan Doyle had built near
Hindhead, south of London, and lived in for at least a decade, was a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004. It was then bought by a developer, and has been empty since then while conservationists and Conan Doyle fans fight to preserve it.
A statue has been erected in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's honour at Crowborough Cross in
Crowborough, East Sussex, England, where Sir Arthur lived for 23 years. There is also a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, close to the house where Conan Doyle was born.
rss feed