Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930)

Photograph of a man dressed as the Arthur Conan Doyle character Sherlock Holmes, with his trademark pipe and deerstalker hat. His silhouette can be seen on a screen behind him.

Scottish writer. He created the detective Sherlock Holmes and his assistant Dr Watson, who first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887) and featured in a number of subsequent stories, including The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). Among Doyle's other works is the fantasy adventure The Lost World (1912). In his later years he became a spiritualist and wrote a History of Spiritualism (1926).

Doyle was born in Edinburgh, qualified as a physician, and from 1882 to 1890 practised in Southsea. During the second South African War (or Boer War) he was senior physician of a field hospital. His The Great Boer War was published in 1900 and an influential pamphlet justifying the conflict, ‘The War in South Africa’, appeared in 1902. Doyle was knighted in 1902.

The Sherlock Holmes character featured in several books, including The Sign of Four (1890) and The Valley of Fear (1915), as well as in volumes of short stories, first published in the Strand Magazine.

The aggressive Professor Challenger was a new character created as the hero of The Lost World and reappeared in The Poison Belt (1913). Doyle's other works include the historical romances Micah Clarke (1889) and The White Company (1891), and a boxing story Rodney Stone (1896). The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1895) and its sequels recount with humorous irony the adventures of a young Napoleonic officer. Songs of Action is a book of poems and Memories and Adventures (1924) contains reminiscences.