Arthur Conan Doyle
May 22, 1859 — July 7, 1930 — Scotland / England
Arthur Conan Doyle was a Scottish physician and author who created Sherlock Holmes — the most popular, imitated, and adapted fictional character in literary history. His career encompassed detective fiction, historical novels, political campaigning, and an intense late devotion to spiritualism. Despite his own varied interests, he spent much of his life resenting the character who consumed him, trying to kill Holmes off and ultimately resurrecting him under mass public pressure.
Medicine and First Stories
Born on May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland, Conan Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where one of his professors — Dr. Joseph Bell — made deductions about patients' occupations and histories from brief physical observation alone. The example of Bell gave Conan Doyle his template for Holmes. He set up a medical practice in Portsmouth, and, finding time on his hands while waiting for patients, began writing. A Study in Scarlet (1887) introduced Holmes and Watson to the world, though its initial reception was modest.
The Sherlock Phenomenon
With the publication of the Holmes short stories in The Strand Magazine from 1891, Conan Doyle became the most popular author in England almost overnight. Readers identified so intensely with Holmes that when Conan Doyle killed the detective at the Reichenbach Falls in "The Final Problem" (1893) — hoping to free himself to write historical novels he considered more serious work — the public outcry was extraordinary. Office workers reportedly wore black armbands in mourning. After ten years of refusal, Conan Doyle was persuaded — in part by a large payment — to resurrect Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). The complete Sherlock Holmes remains in continuous print and has generated more film and television adaptations than any other fictional character.
Did You Know?
Despite creating the world's most famous fictional rationalist, Arthur Conan Doyle became one of the most credulous believers in spiritualism in the English-speaking world. He was taken in by the "Cottingley Fairies" photographs — two Yorkshire girls who had photographed cardboard cutouts and claimed they were real fairies — and defended their authenticity publicly even after skeptics exposed them as fakes.
Beyond Holmes
Conan Doyle's non-Holmes work included the Professor Challenger science fiction stories, most notably The Lost World (1912), in which prehistoric creatures survive on a remote South American plateau — a concept that directly inspired Jurassic Park. He also conducted influential real-world investigations, helping to overturn wrongful convictions, most notably those of George Edalji — a case that contributed to the creation of the Court of Criminal Appeal in England. He died on July 7, 1930, in Sussex. His character Holmes has never stopped appearing in new adaptations, from the Soviet television series to the American Elementary to Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock.