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Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859 – July 7, 1930) 
is the British author most famously known for his stories about 
the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a 
major innovation in the field of crime fiction. He was a prolific 
writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical 
novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.

He is sometimes called Conan Doyle—Conan was originally a middle 
name but he used it as part of his surname in his later years.

Life

He was born in 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was sent to the 
Jesuit preparatory school Stonyhurst at the age of nine, and by 
the time he left the school in 1875 he rejected Christianity to 
become an agnostic. From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at 
Edinburgh University, including a period working in the town 
of Aston (now a district of Birmingham). 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 won his doctorate in 1885. His medical practice 
was unsuccessful; while waiting for patients he began writing 
stories. His first literary experience came in Chambers's 
Edinburgh Journal before he was 20.

It was only after he subsequently moved his practice to Southsea 
that he began to indulge more extensively in literature. 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.

In 1885 he married Louise Hawkins, who suffered from 
tuberculosis and eventually died in 1906. He married Miss 
Jean Leckie in 1907, whom he had first met and fallen in 
love with in 1897 but had maintained a platonic relationship 
with out of loyalty to his first wife. Doyle had five 
children, two with his first wife (Mary and Kingsley), and 
three with his second wife (Jean, Denis, and Adrian).

In 1890 Doyle studied the eye in Vienna, and in 1891 moved 
to London to set up a practice as an oculist. This also 
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." In December 1893 he did so, with Holmes 
and his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty apparently plunging 
to their deaths together over a waterfall in the story "The 
Final Problem". Public outcry led him to bring the character 
back—Doyle returned to the story in "The Adventure of the 
Empty House", saying that only Moriarty had fallen, but, 
since Holmes had other dangerous enemies, he had arranged 
to be temporarily "dead" also. Holmes eventually appeared 
in 56 short stories and four of Doyle's novels (he has 
since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors, 
as well).

Following the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 
century and the condemnation from around the world over 
Britain's conduct, Doyle wrote a short pamphlet titled 
The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct which was 
widely translated. Doyle believed that it was this 
pamphlet that resulted in his being knighted and appointed 
as Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey in 1902. He also wrote the 
longer book The Great Boer War in 1900. During the early 
years of the twentieth century Sir Arthur twice ran for 
Parliament as a Liberal Unionist, once in Edinburgh and 
once in the Border Burghs, but although he received a 
respectable vote he was not elected. He did, however, become 
one of the first Honorary Members of the Ski Club of Great 
Britain.

Conan Doyle was involved even in the campaign for the reform 
of the Congo Free State, lead by the journalist Edmund Dene 
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 Congo. He become acquainted with Morel and Casement, 
taking even inspiration by them for two of the main character 
of the novel The Lost World (1912). He broke with both, 
however, with the first world war, when Morel (who was rather 
left-wing) became one of the leaders of the pacifist movement 
and Casement betrayed England for his Irish nationalistic 
views. He, however, tried to save Casement from death penalty, 
arguing that he had driven mad and was not responsible of 
his act.

Doyle also caused two cases to be reopened. 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 dead set on 
Edalji's guilt, even though the mutilations continued even 
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 to establish a way to correct other miscarriages 
of justice. The second case—that of Oscar Slater, a German 
Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 
82-year-old woman in 1908—excited Doyle's curiosity because 
of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general 
sense that Slater was framed. It is not known whether either 
enjoyed the same resolution as Holmes' clients.

In his later years, 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 involvement was his book The Coming of the Fairies 
(1921): He was apparently totally 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. 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 under the pretense of occultism.

Arthur Conan Doyle is buried in the Church Yard at Minstead 
in the New Forest, Hampshire, England.

A statue has been erected in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's honour. 
It may be seen at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, East 
Sussex, England, where Sir Arthur lived for 23 years.

Sherlock Holmes Stories

    * A Study in Scarlet (1887)
    * The Sign of Four (1890)
    * The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
    * The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
    * The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
    * The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904)
    * The Valley of Fear (1904)
    * His Last Bow (1917)
    * The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)



Professor Challenger Stories

    * The Lost World (1912)
    * The Poison Belt (1913)
    * The Land of Mists (1926)
    * The Disintegration Machine (1927)
    * When the World Screamed (1928)



Historical novels

    * The White Company (1891)
    * Micah Clarke (1888)
    * The Great Shadow (1892)
    * The Refugees (publ. 1893, written 1892)
    * The Great Shadow (1892)
    * Uncle Bernac (1897)
    * Sir Nigel (1906)


Other works

    * Mystery of Cloomber (1889)
    * The Captain of the Polestar, and other tales (1890)
    * The Doings Of Raffles Haw (1891)
    * Beyond the City (1892)
    * Round The Red Lamp (1894)
    * The Parasite (1894)
    * The Stark Munro Letters (1895)
    * Rodney Stone (1896)
    * Songs of Action (1898)
    * The Tragedy of The Korosko (1898)
    * A Duet (1899)
    * The Great Boer War (1900)
    * The Adventures of Gerard (1903)
    * Through the Magic Door (1907)
    * The Crime of the Congo (1909)
    * The New Revelation (1918)
    * The Vital Message (1919)
    * Tales of Terror & Mystery (1923)
    * The History of Spiritualism (1926)