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The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes & Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle biography
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle led a life more bizarre than any of his fiction. So bizarre, in fact, that certain aspects of it were concealed from his millions of admirers, not least by the author himself.
It was a life that led from poverty to enormous wealth, from failure in one profession to worldwide success in another, from respectability to international notoriety, and from acclaim to ridicule. It was a life of great contrasts.
Loved for his popular fiction, Doyle longed to be known for his serious historical novels; sought out for his skills as a scientific detective, he tried instead to promote the supernatural as a way of solving crimes; admired for his bluff Victorian no-nonsense attitudes, in later years he spent most of his life and his fortune in telling the world that he could talk to the dead.
Arthur was born into poverty and hardship on 22 May 1859 in a small flat in Edinburgh. He was the third of Charles and Mary Doyle's nine children, of whom seven survived.
Alcoholism had brought his father's short working life as an artist to a close and, from the age of nine, the young Arthur had to be sent away from his boyhood home - possibly to protect him from the shame and drunken rages of his father.
At some point Charles Doyle entered a nursing facility to receive treatment and was later transferred to a lunatic asylum.
Undaunted, the young Arthur studied to be a doctor at Edinburgh University, where he met his mentor Dr Joseph Bell: a tall, aloof scientist with a cold-blooded detachment, a disturbingly intense stare and astonishing powers of observation and deduction.
Doyle started writing while still a student and in his third year took up the post of ship's surgeon on a whaling ship bound for the Arctic. Then, after graduating, he briefly served as a doctor on a steamer bound for Africa.
On his return, Doyle set up as a GP in the sleepy seaside town of Southsea. Having discovered that Southsea "is blessed with too many doctors and altogether too few ailments" Conan Doyle used his spare time for writing.
He sketched out a story in which a young and unsuccessful doctor meets a "sleepy-eyed young violin-collector" and is drawn into a murder investigation. A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes' first appearance, pleased its creator, but no-one else until much later.
At the age of 31, at his lowest ebb, Arthur Conan Doyle embarked on the work which gave him his place in history - the Sherlock Holmes short stories.
Written quickly and published monthly in the newly-launched Strand magazine, their vivid characterisation, atmospheric scene-painting and often bizarre plots were a triumphant success.
Doyle was catapulted to unprecedented fame and fortune. "With a wild rush of joy" Conan Doyle decided to abandon all pretence of a career in medicine.
During the Summer of 1893 his wife Louise – and mother of his children Mary and Kingsley – was diagnosed with consumption (TB), a condition Doyle had failed to spot despite being a qualified doctor.
His father Charles died in October and around this time Arthur decided to 'kill off' Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem.
It brought howls of outrage. Fans wore black armbands in the streets, others wrote abusive letters about the murder of their beloved detective.
Although he remained faithful to Louise, four years later Doyle met the beautiful 24-year-old Jean Leckie. There was no hiding the fact that he and Jean fell in love, meeting up frequently over the years both in private and in public.
In 1900 he was rejected for military service in the Boer War so, instead, Doyle volunteered as a doctor.
After he returned, Conan Doyle had a change of heart about Sherlock Holmes who re-appeared in 1901 in the famous Hound of the Baskervilles.
However, Holmes enthusiasts will know that although this represented a reappearance, Doyle wasn't technically bringing the character back to life as the story was set before The Final Problem, the great detective's last adventure.
Holmes was officially 're-born' in The Empty House, published in The Strand in 1903, when it was revealed that he had survived the Falls.
Louise died in 1906 and Conan Doyle became noted for championing miscarriages of justice, though his support for spiritualism and the famous "fairy" pictures didn't get such positive reception.
He married Jean in 1907 and went on to have three more children with her.
He was among the first to warn against the growing threat of German militarism in advance of the First World War, often conjecturing about new developments well ahead of his time – from the Channel Tunnel to the growing modern war threat of submarines and airships.
However, his later years and much of his money were spent devoted to spiritualism and he died in 1930 at the age of 70.
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