May 22nd celebrates the birth of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator of Sherlock Homes, the most famous detective of all time, and the author of his original adventures. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 22nd of May 1859 and died on July 7th, 1930. Over 125 years after his creation, Sherlock Holmes still remains as the most popular fictional detective in history. Conan Doyle eventually wrote a total of 4 novels and 60 stories about Sherlock Holmes, nearly 200 novels, short stories, poems, historical books and pamphlets.
Toray, almost 70 years following his death, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s hyper-rational detective, Sherlock Holmes is such an enduring character in Western literature that he and his creator have become practically one in the popular imagination.
Scottish writer Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born the third of 10 siblings. He grew up in a greatly respected family in the art world, drawing much of his imagination from his mother, who was an avid reader and shared vivid stories with her son, that would inspire many of his future short stories. He went on to study at Stonyhurst College, and left in 1875. He found solace in his natural ability in storytelling and his pursuit of creative writing allowed him to escape the harsh reality of bullying from his peers.
He studied medicine from 1876 to 1881 at the University of Edinburgh. While studying, he began writing short stories and before he reached the age of 20 years, his first published story appeared in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal. To support himself through school, he obtained temporary work on an Arctic whaling ship, as a medical officer. After earning his medical degree in 1881, he was employed on the SS Mayumba as a ship’s doctor, during a freighter voyage to the West African coast. On his return to England, he struggled throughout the early 1880s to earn a living through a medical practice but failed to attract a sufficient number of patients. Conan Doyle sold his first short story to a magazine in 1879 and began to sell several additional stories to supplement his income.
In 1885, he completed his doctorate on the subject of tabes dorsalis and married Louisa Hawkins that same year. He had two children with her. Around the turn of the century, Conan Doyle was involved in two wars. He was initially a correspondent in Egypt, and later ran a hospital during the Boer War in South Africa. A popular pamphlet he wrote in support of the Boar War led to his being knighted in 1902. Louisa died on 4th July 1906 from tuberculosis, and the following year he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie and fathered three children.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle suffered a debilitating heart attack on his return home after a gruelling tour of Holland and Scandinavia in 1929 and died several months later in the hall of Windlesham, his house in East Sussex, on 7th July 1930.
The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire reads :
STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS
The house where Conan Doyle lived for a decade was a hotel and a restaurant between 1924 and 2004 and now stands empty while Conan Doyle fans and conservationists fight to preserve it. A statue honours Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough while there is also a statute of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh close to where Conan Doyle was born.
The acclaimed writer and physician went on to become one of the most prevalent figures in the history of crime fiction.
