Arthur Conan Doyle

(1859 – 1930)

Biographical Sketch

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (Edinburgh, Scotland, May 22, 1859 – Crowborough, East Sussex, England, July 7, 1930) was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

A graduate of the University of Edinburgh Medical School, Doyle was employed as a ship’s surgeon for a year and thereafter briefly practiced medicine with a former Edinburgh classmate in Plymouth, before opening a practice of his own in Southsea near Portsmouth.  Some eight years later, having expanded his medical knowledge to the field of ophthalmology, he set up as an ophthalmologist in London.  While waiting for patients, Doyle turned to fiction writing, an activity he had already engaged in during his years at Edinburgh University.

Doyle initially struggled to find a publisher for his work. His earliest extant fiction, The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe, was unsuccessfully submitted to Blackwood’s Magazine. His first published piece, The Mystery of Sasassa Valley, a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal on September 6, 1879, while Doyle was still enrolled at Edinburgh University. On September 20, 1879, likewise prior to qualifying as a doctor, he published his first academic article, Gelsemium as a Poison in the British Medical Journal; a study which over a century later the Daily Telegraph would come to cite as potentially useful in the 21st-century alleged murder investigation of a Russian whistleblower.

Doyle’s first novels were The Mystery of Cloomber, not published until 1888, and the unfinished Narrative of John Smith, published only in 2011.  His first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was taken by Ward Lock & Co on November 20, 1886, giving Doyle £25 (£2500 today) for all rights to the story. The piece appeared one year later in the Beeton’s Christmas Annual and received good reviews in The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.

Holmes was partially modelled on his former university teacher Joseph Bell. In 1892, in a letter to Bell, Doyle wrote, “It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes … round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man,” and in his 1924 autobiography, he remarked, “It is no wonder that after the study of such a character [i.e., Bell] I used and amplified his methods when in later life I tried to build up a scientific detective who solved cases on his own merits and not through the folly of the criminal. Robert Louis Stevenson was able, even in faraway Samoa, to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: “My compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. … [C]an this be my old friend Joe Bell?” Other authors sometimes suggest additional influences – for instance, the famous Edgar Allan Poe character C. Auguste Dupin. Dr. (John) Watson owes his surname, but not any other obvious characteristic, to a Portsmouth medical colleague of Doyle’s, Dr James Watson.

A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an author new to the publishing world and he left them. Short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the Strand Magazine. Doyle wrote the first five Holmes short stories from his London doctor’s office.

Doyle’s attitude towards his most famous creation was ambivalent. 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, “You won’t! You can’t! You mustn’t!” In an attempt to deflect publishers’ demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing to pay even the large sums he asked. As a result, he became one of the best-paid authors of his time.

In December 1893, in order to be able to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story The Final Problem. Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.  In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, The Adventure of the Empty House, in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen; but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies – especially Colonel Sebastian Moran – he had arranged to also be perceived as dead. Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories – the last published in 1927 – and four novels by Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.

In addition to his Sherlock Holmes canon, Doyle also amassed a portfolio of other short stories, including “The Captain of the Pole-Star” and “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement“, both inspired by Doyle’s time at sea. The latter popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste and added fictional details such as the perfect condition of the ship (which had actually taken on water by the time it was discovered) and its boats remaining on board (the one boat was in fact missing) that have come to dominate popular accounts of the incident. Doyle’s spelling of the ship’s name as Marie Celeste has become commoner in everyday use than the original form.

Between 1888 and 1906, Doyle moreover wrote seven historical novels, which he and many critics regarded as his best work. He also authored nine other novels, and later in his career (1912–29) five stories, two of novella length, featuring the irascible scientist Professor Challenger. The Challenger stories include what is probably his best-known work after the Holmes oeuvre, The Lost World. Doyle was a prolific author of short stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic times featuring the French character Brigadier Gerard.

Doyle’s stage works include Waterloo, the reminiscences of an English veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, the lead character being written for the era’s preeminent actor, Henry Irving; as well as The House of Temperley, the plot of which reflects his abiding interest of boxing; The Speckled Band, after the short story of that name; and the 1893 collaboration with Peter Pan‘s would-be creator J.M. Barrie on the libretto of a Jane Annie, a comic opera in the tradition of Gilbert & Sullivan, whose music would come to be composed by Arthur Sullivan’s pupil Ernest Ford.

Doyle was known as Spiritualism’s Ambassador, a passion that was started in 1873 when he joined the Society of Psychical Research. His passion for spiritualism is reflected particularly in his writing during the later part of his life: in all, nineteen of his over sixty books are about, or impacted by his spiritualist beliefs.

Read more about Arthur Conan Doyle on Wikipedia.

A Selection of Quotes

A Study in Scarlet

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

[Dr. Watson’s summary list of Sherlock Holmes’s strengths and weaknesses:]
“1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil.
2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil.
3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil.
4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble.
5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.
6. Knowledge of Geology: Practical but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Knowledge of Chemistry: Profound.
8. Knowledge of Anatomy: Accurate but unsystematic.
9. Knowledge of Sensational Literature: Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.”

“Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.’
That’s a rather broad idea,’ I remarked.
One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,’ he answered.”

“There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it.”

The Sign of Four

“You know my methods. Apply them.”

“Yes, there are in me the makings of a very fine loafer, and also of a pretty spry sort of fellow. I often think of those lines of old Goethe: ‘Schade, daß die Natur nur einen Menschen aus dir schuf; Denn zum würdigen Mann war und zum Schelmen der Stoff.’“

The Hound of the Baskervilles

“The devil’s agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?”

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

A Scandal in Bohemia

“By the way, Doctor, I shall want your cooperation.”
“I shall be delighted.”
“You don’t mind breaking the law?”
“Not in the least.”
“Nor running a chance of arrest?”
“Not in a good cause.”
“Oh, the cause is excellent!”
“Then I am your man.”
“I was sure that I might rely on you.”

“I am lost without my Boswell.”

The Boscombe Valley Mystery

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

“You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”

The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor

“My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.”

“Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.”

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

“Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. “It’s a bonny thing,” said he. “Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil’s pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in soutern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?”

The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches

“To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.”

The Red Headed League

“Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

“It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.”

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

The Naval Treaty

“What a lovely thing a rose is!”
He walked past the couch to the open window and held up the drooping stalk of a moss-rose, looking down at the dainty blend of crimson and green. It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.
“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion,” said he, leaning with his back against the shutters. “It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

“Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman.”
[Sherlock Holmes on Mrs. Hudson’s cooking.]

The Musgrave Ritual

A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman’s love, however badly he may have treated her.”

The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter

“There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger’s Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offenses, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere.”

The Return of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton

“You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?”
“No, indeed!”
“You’ll be interested to hear that I’m engaged.”
“My dear fellow! I congrat–”
“To Milverton’s housemaid.”
“My dear Holmes!”
“I wanted information, Watson.”

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

“The affair seems absurdly trifling, and yet I dare call nothing trivial when I reflect that some of my most classic cases have had the least promising commencement. You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.”

“The Press, Watson, is a most valuable institution, if you only know how to use it.”

The Adventure of the Norwood Builder

“All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade’s facts.”

The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter

“I do not know whether it came from his own innate depravity or from the promptings of his master, but he was rude enough to set a dog at me. Neither dog nor man liked the look of my stick, however, and the matter fell through. Relations were strained after that, and further inquiries out of the question.”

“It is a pity he did not write in pencil. As you have no doubt frequently observed, the impression usually goes through – a fact which has dissolved many a happy marriage.”

His Last Bow

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax

“[O]n general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.”

The Adventure of the Cardboard Box

“I should prefer that you do not mention my name at all in connection with this case, as I choose to be only associated with those crimes which present some difficulty in their solution.”

The Adventure Of The Dying Detective

“Because it is my desire. Is that not enough?”
[Sherlock Holmes on his raison d’être.]

“The best way of successfully acting a part is to be it.”

The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot

“I fear that if the matter is beyond humanity, it is certainly beyond me.”

“To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.”

The Bruce-Partington Plans

“It is fortunate for this community that I am not a criminal.”

His Last Bow

“He seems to have declared war on the King’s English as well as on the English king.”

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventure of the Creeping Man

“Watson. Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.”

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”

The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone

“No violence, gentlemen – no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!”

“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.”

The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

“Some people’s affability is more deadly than the violence of coarser souls.”

The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire

“Anything is better than stagnation.”

The Valley of Fear

“Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.”

Through The Magic Door

“I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland.”

Find more quotes by Arthur Conan Doyle on Wikiquote and Goodreads.

Links

• The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate
• The Sherlock Holmes Society of London
• The Sherlock Holmes Museum
• I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere (unofficial site)
• The Chronicles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (unofficial site)
• The Conan Doyle Encyclopedia (unofficial site)
• Arthur Conan Doyle on Victorian Web
• Arthur Conan Doyle’s biography at the Kirjasto Authors’ Calendar
• Arthur Conan Doyle at Britannica.com
• Arthur Conan Doyle at Books from Scotland
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• Reviews and blog posts related to Arthur Conan Doyle on this blog, Lioness at Large
  • Project: 221B Baker Street
  • Project: On Page and Screen

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