Arthur Conan Doyle: The Life Story Behind the Sherlock Holmes Creator

Arthur Conan Doyle created the most famous detective in the world, and then he tried to kill him. Sherlock Holmes, with his deerstalker cap, his pipe, and his cold, clear mind, is known in almost every country, even by people who have never read a Holmes story. He lives at 221B Baker Street, he solves crimes that no one else can solve, and he does it by noticing small details that other people miss. He is a character who has outlived his creator by nearly a hundred years, and who is still being played on stage, on television, and in films today.

The man who created him was a doctor, a sportsman, a writer of historical novels, and a believer in the supernatural. He was a man of two minds: one mind that loved logic, science, and clear thinking, and another mind that believed in fairies, in spirits, and in life after death. That second mind led him into public arguments, into strange beliefs, and into a friendship with a famous magician that ended in a bitter quarrel. It is a strange story, and it is one that makes Conan Doyle more interesting than a simple tale of a writer who got lucky with a detective.

This is the story of a Scottish doctor who wrote a detective story while waiting for patients who never came, who became famous for a character he grew to hate, who killed that character and was forced by his readers to bring him back to life, and who spent his later years trying to prove that the dead could speak to the living.

Edinburgh, a Doctor’s Son, and a Teacher Who Saw Everything

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the second of ten children born to Charles Altamont Doyle, an artist who worked for the government, and Mary Foley Doyle, an Irishwoman who loved books and stories. The family was not rich, and Charles Doyle drank too much and struggled to keep work, so Mary raised the children largely on her own, telling them stories of knights, of history, and of adventure. Arthur grew up listening to those stories, and they gave him a love of the past and a love of tales well told.

He went to school at Stonyhurst, a Catholic school in England, and he was not happy there. The school was strict, the food was poor, and the boys were beaten for small faults. Arthur was a strong, tall boy, and he learned to stand up for himself, but he did not love the school. He left Stonyhurst and went to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he found teachers who changed his life. The most important of them was Dr. Joseph Bell, a surgeon who was famous for his powers of observation. Bell could look at a patient and tell, from small details, where the man came from, what work he did, and what was wrong with him. Arthur watched Bell work, and he stored the lesson away. Years later, when he created Sherlock Holmes, he gave Holmes Bell’s gift: the ability to see what others missed, and to reason from small clues to a great truth.

At university, Arthur also learned to write. He wrote short stories, he played sport, and he was a keen cricketer and footballer. He was a big, strong man, and he loved the outdoors. He finished his medical studies in 1881, and he went to sea as a ship’s doctor, first on a whaling ship to the Arctic, and then on a ship to West Africa. The voyages were hard, and they were dangerous, but they gave him stories to tell, and they gave him a taste of the wider world. He wrote about the Arctic in his diary, and he kept the habit of writing wherever he went.

When he came home, he set up as a doctor in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, in 1882. He opened a small practice, and he waited for patients. The patients did not come. He had little money, and he spent his days in an empty waiting room, writing stories to pass the time. It was in that waiting room, with no patients to see, that he wrote the first Sherlock Holmes story. The empty practice was a failure as a business, but it was a gift as a writer’s study, because it gave him time to write, and time to think about the detective who would make him famous.

A Study in Scarlet and the Birth of Holmes

In 1886, Arthur wrote A Study in Scarlet, the first story about Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. John Watson. Holmes was a consulting detective, a man who lived at 221B Baker Street in London, and who solved crimes by observation and by logic. Watson was a doctor, recently back from war, who told the stories, and who was the reader’s guide to Holmes’s strange mind. The two men were opposites: Holmes was cold, clever, and distant, while Watson was warm, loyal, and ordinary. Together, they made a perfect pair, and readers loved them from the start.

The book was not an instant success. It was published in a magazine called Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, and it sold modestly. Arthur was paid a small sum for it, and he went back to his practice. But the character had caught the public’s imagination, and when Arthur wrote a second Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four, in 1890, it did better. Then, in 1891, he began to write short Holmes stories for The Strand Magazine, a popular monthly magazine, and the stories became a sensation. Readers waited each month for the next story, and they talked about Holmes as if he were a real person. Arthur was no longer a struggling doctor. He was a famous writer, and his waiting room was full of readers, if not of patients.

The Holmes stories were different from other detective stories of the time, because they were based on science and on observation. Holmes did not guess. He looked at a hat, a footprint, a speck of dust, and he reasoned from it to the truth. That method, which Arthur had learned from Dr. Joseph Bell, made the stories feel modern and clever, and readers loved to follow Holmes’s reasoning, trying to solve the crime before he did. The stories were also exciting, with murders, stolen jewels, and secret societies, and they were written in a clear, fast style that made them easy to read. They were the perfect stories for a magazine, and they made The Strand famous as well as Arthur.

Arthur did not want to be known only as the creator of Holmes. He thought of himself as a writer of historical novels, and he believed that his best work was in books like The White Company, a novel about medieval knights, published in 1891, and The Great Shadow, about the Napoleonic Wars. He was proud of those books, and he was frustrated that the public loved Holmes more than they loved his historical work. That frustration would shape the next part of his life, and it would lead him to do something that shocked his readers: he would kill Sherlock Holmes.

Killing Holmes, The Hound, and the Readers Who Would Not Let Him Die

By 1893, Arthur was tired of Holmes. He felt that the detective was taking up all his time, and that he could not write the serious books he wanted to write while Holmes demanded a new story every month. He decided to end the character, and he wrote The Final Problem, a story in which Holmes and his great enemy, Professor Moriarty, fell together over the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, both apparently dead. Arthur thought that would be the end of it, and that he could move on to other work. He was wrong.

The readers were furious. They wrote letters to The Strand, they wore black armbands in mourning for Holmes, and they begged Arthur to bring him back. One reader is said to have written that Arthur was a murderer, and the magazine lost readers. Arthur was surprised by the strength of the feeling, but he held firm for a time. He wrote other books, including The Lost World in 1912, a novel about a plateau in South America where dinosaurs still lived, with the character of Professor Challenger, a loud, bearded scientist who became almost as famous as Holmes. The Lost World was a success, and it showed that Arthur could write adventure as well as detective stories, but the public still wanted Holmes.

In 1901, Arthur gave in, in part. He wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles, a novel set before Holmes’s death, in which Holmes investigated a curse on a family in Devon, with a great black hound that haunted the moors. The book was a huge success, and it is now seen as one of the best Holmes stories ever written. It did not bring Holmes back to life, but it showed that the public still loved him, and that Arthur could still write about him brilliantly. Two years later, in 1903, Arthur brought Holmes back for good, in The Adventure of the Empty House, in which it was explained that Holmes had not died at the falls, but had survived and hidden for three years. The readers were delighted, and Holmes lived on, in new stories, until Arthur’s death.

Arthur was knighted in 1902, for his work during the Boer War, when he had served as a doctor in South Africa and had written a book defending Britain’s conduct in the war. He became Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and he was a public figure, known not only as a writer, but as a man who spoke his mind on public questions. He stood for Parliament, though he was not elected, and he campaigned for justice in cases where he believed innocent men had been wrongly convicted. He used Holmes’s method in real life, looking at evidence and arguing for the truth, and he helped to free men who had been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. That work showed the best side of him: a man who believed in reason, in evidence, and in fairness.

The Lost World, the War, and a Turn to the Spirit World

The First World War, which began in 1914, changed Arthur’s life deeply. His son, Kingsley, served in the war and died of wounds in 1918, at the age of twenty-five. His brother, Innes, also died in the war. The losses were terrible, and Arthur, who had always been a rational man, began to look for comfort in a different place. He turned to spiritualism, the belief that the dead could speak to the living through mediums, and he became one of its most famous supporters. He wrote books about it, he gave lectures about it, and he spent a great deal of his time and money on it.

This turn surprised many people, because it seemed to contradict the logic of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes believed in evidence, in reason, and in what could be proved. Arthur now believed in things that could not be proved, in séances, in photographs of fairies, and in messages from the dead. In 1920, he was involved in the famous Cottingley Fairies case, in which two young girls in Yorkshire claimed to have photographed fairies in their garden. Arthur believed the photographs were real, and he wrote about them with enthusiasm. Most people today believe the photographs were faked, and the girls later admitted that they had made the fairies from paper, but Arthur never changed his mind. He wanted to believe, and that want was stronger than his reason.

His belief in spiritualism led to a famous quarrel with Harry Houdini, the great magician and escape artist. Houdini was a sceptic who exposed fake mediums, and he and Arthur had been friends at first. When Houdini told Arthur that the mediums were tricking him, Arthur refused to listen, and the friendship ended in bitterness. It was a sad end to a friendship between two famous men, and it showed how deeply Arthur held his beliefs. He was not a man who changed his mind easily, and when he believed in something, he believed in it fully, even when the evidence was against him.

In his later years, Arthur continued to write, to lecture, and to campaign for spiritualism. He travelled the world, speaking to large audiences about life after death, and he spent his fortune on the cause. His family worried about him, and his friends tried to persuade him to be more careful, but he would not listen. He was a man of strong convictions, and he followed them to the end, even when they made him look foolish to the outside world. That stubbornness is part of his character, and it is both admirable and sad: admirable because he stood by what he believed, sad because what he believed was, in the view of most people, not true.

The Final Years and a Detective Who Would Not Die

Arthur Conan Doyle died on 7 July 1930, at his home in Crowborough, Sussex, at the age of seventy-one. He had suffered from heart trouble, and he died quietly, with his family around him. He was buried in the garden of his home, and later his remains were moved to a churchyard in Hampshire. He left behind a large body of work: the Holmes stories, the historical novels, The Lost World, and many books on spiritualism. But the work that has lasted, the work that is still read and loved today, is Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes has outlived his creator by nearly a hundred years. He has been played by many actors, from Basil Rathbone to Benedict Cumberbatch, and he has appeared in films, in television series, in plays, and in new books by other writers. The stories have been translated into many languages, and 221B Baker Street has become a real address, with a museum and a plaque, visited by fans from all over the world. Holmes is no longer only a character in a book. He is a part of modern culture, and he shows no sign of fading. That is a remarkable legacy for a character who was created in an empty doctor’s waiting room in Portsmouth.

Arthur himself is remembered as a complex man: a doctor, a writer, a sportsman, a campaigner for justice, and a believer in the spirit world. He was a man who loved logic, and a man who loved mystery, and he lived with both sides of himself for his whole life. His books are still read, his detective is still loved, and his story is still told, because it is a story about imagination, about fame, and about a man who created something greater than himself, and who spent the rest of his life trying to live with it.

The Doctor Who Used Holmes’s Method in Real Life

Arthur Conan Doyle was not only a writer of detective stories. He was a man who used the detective’s method in his own life, to help people who had been wrongly accused. He took up the cases of men who had been sent to prison for crimes they said they did not commit, and he looked at the evidence with the same care that Holmes looked at a footprint. The most famous of these cases was that of George Edalji, a young man of Indian origin who had been convicted of harming animals in Staffordshire. Arthur looked at the evidence, found that it did not fit, and campaigned for Edalji’s release. The case was not fully cleared in Arthur’s lifetime, but his work helped to bring about a new court to hear appeals, and it showed that a writer could use his fame for justice.

He also took up the case of Oscar Slater, a German Jew who had been convicted of murder in Glasgow. Arthur argued that Slater was innocent, and he wrote a book about the case, pointing out the flaws in the evidence. Slater was eventually released, though he was not fully cleared for many years. These cases show a side of Arthur that is easy to miss among the Holmes stories: a man who believed in fairness, who was willing to spend his time and his money on strangers, and who used his skill as a writer to argue for the truth. He was not always right, but he was always sincere, and his work for justice is a part of his legacy that deserves to be remembered.

His medical training also stayed with him. He had been a doctor, he had worked on ships, and he had seen illness and death at close hand. That experience gave his writing a realism that other detective writers lacked. When Watson described a wound, or Holmes described a poison, the details were right, because Arthur knew medicine. He also knew the human body, and he knew how people behaved when they were ill, or afraid, or in pain. That knowledge made his characters feel real, and it made his stories more convincing than those of writers who had never seen a sickroom.

The Sportsman, the Traveller, and the Man of His Time

Arthur Conan Doyle was a big, strong man, and he loved sport. He played cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club, he played football, he skied, and he was one of the first men to drive a car in Britain. He was a man of his time, a Victorian gentleman who believed in fair play, in courage, and in doing one’s duty. He wrote about sport, he played it, and he lived by its values. That love of sport is in his books, too. Holmes and Watson are not only clever. They are brave, they are loyal, and they stand up for what is right, even when it is dangerous. Those are the values of a sportsman, and Arthur gave them to his characters.

He was also a traveller. He went to the Arctic as a ship’s doctor, he went to West Africa, he went to South Africa during the Boer War, and he travelled the world lecturing about spiritualism in his later years. Each journey gave him stories, and each story found its way into his books. The Lost World, with its plateau of dinosaurs, came from his love of adventure and of the unknown. The Holmes stories, with their London fog and their country houses, came from his life in England. He was a man who had seen the world, and he wrote about it with the confidence of a person who had lived it, not only imagined it.

He also gave the world a way of thinking about history that is still useful today. He argued that great men do not make history, and that the small actions of ordinary people matter more than the plans of generals. That idea is worth remembering, because it tells us that our own small actions matter, even when we feel powerless. A soldier, a peasant, a mother, a teacher: these people make history, one day at a time, and Tolstoy saw that clearly, long before most historians did.

My Take:

I admire Arthur Conan Doyle, and I find him puzzling in equal measure, and that is why his story stays with me. The admiration comes first, because he created Sherlock Holmes, and Holmes is one of the great characters in all of literature. A detective who solves crimes by looking at small details, who reasons from a speck of dust to the truth, who is cold and clever and yet deeply loyal to his friend: that is a creation of real genius. I have read the Holmes stories many times, and each time I enjoy the way Holmes thinks, the way Watson tells the story, and the way London feels in the fog. That pleasure has not faded, and it will not fade, because the stories are built well, and they are built to last.

What I admire most is the method. Holmes does not guess. He observes, he reasons, and he proves. That method came from Dr. Joseph Bell, Arthur’s teacher in Edinburgh, who could look at a patient and tell where he came from and what work he did. Arthur took that gift and gave it to a fictional detective, and in doing so, he changed the way detective stories were written. Before Holmes, detectives in books often solved crimes by luck, or by a sudden confession. After Holmes, they had to think, to look, and to reason. That is a real contribution to literature, and it is one that Arthur should be proud of, even if he himself did not always value it as much as his historical novels.

I also admire his work for justice in real life. He took up the cases of George Edalji and Oscar Slater, men who had been convicted of crimes they said they did not commit, and he used his fame and his skill as a writer to argue for them. That takes courage, because it means standing up to the courts, to the police, and to public opinion, and saying that the system has made a mistake. He did not have to do it. He was rich and famous, and he could have lived quietly. Instead, he spent his time and his money on strangers, because he believed in fairness. I respect that deeply, because it shows that his belief in reason was not only for his books. It was for his life as well.

His love of history also matters to me. He believed that his best work was in novels like The White Company, about medieval knights, and he was proud of those books. I understand why a writer would want to be known for the work he loved most, rather than for the work that made him famous. It is a common feeling among artists: the public loves one thing, and the artist loves another, and the artist feels that the public has missed the point. Arthur felt that about Holmes, and he tried to kill Holmes so that he could write the books he truly cared about. I understand that frustration, even if I think he was wrong about which books were best. The White Company is a good book, but Holmes is a great creation, and history has judged them that way.

But I must also write about the part of his life that puzzles me, and that is his belief in spiritualism. Here was a man who created the most logical character in literature, a man who believed in evidence, in reason, and in what could be proved, and yet he believed in fairies, in séances, and in messages from the dead. He believed photographs of paper fairies were real, and he quarrelled with his friend Houdini, who tried to show him that the mediums were tricking him. That contradiction is hard to understand, and I have thought about it a great deal. How could the same mind hold both beliefs at once?

I think the answer lies in grief. Arthur lost his son Kingsley in the First World War, and he lost his brother Innes as well. Those losses were terrible, and they broke something in him. A man who has lost a son will look for comfort anywhere, and spiritualism offered him comfort: the idea that his son was not gone, that he could still speak to him, that death was not the end. I understand that need, and I feel sympathy for it. Grief can make a person believe things they would not otherwise believe, because the alternative, that the person is gone for ever, is too painful to bear. I do not think Arthur was foolish. I think he was grieving, and that his grief led him to beliefs that his reason would otherwise have rejected.

That does not mean his beliefs were right. The Cottingley Fairies photographs were faked, the mediums were often tricking their audiences, and the evidence for spiritualism was weak. Arthur should have known that, and as a man who valued evidence, he should have looked more carefully. I think he did not look carefully because he did not want to. He wanted to believe, and that want was stronger than his love of evidence. That is a human failing, and it is one we all share. We believe what we want to believe, especially when we are sad, and we ignore the evidence that tells us otherwise. Arthur’s story is a warning about that, and it is a warning worth hearing.

I also think about his friendship with Houdini, and how sad it is that it ended in bitterness. Houdini was a man who knew how tricks were done, and he tried to help his friend see the truth. Arthur would not listen, and the friendship broke. That is a loss, because both men were remarkable, and they could have learned from each other. Instead, they parted as enemies, each convinced that the other was wrong. It shows how a belief, held too tightly, can break a friendship, and how a man who will not listen can lose the people who care about him most. I hope that Arthur, in his quiet moments, regretted the quarrel, even if he never said so in public.

What I learn from him, in the end, is that a writer can create something greater than himself, and that the creation can take on a life of its own. Arthur tried to kill Holmes, and his readers would not let him. He tried to move on to other books, and the public kept asking for Holmes. He spent his later years on spiritualism, and the world still remembers him for Holmes. That is both a triumph and a kind of tragedy. It is a triumph because he created a character who will live for ever. It is a tragedy because he never fully accepted that triumph, and he spent much of his life trying to escape it. I think he should have accepted it, and been proud of it, because Holmes is a gift to the world, and few writers ever give such a gift.

I also learn from him that logic and belief can live in the same mind, and that they do not always agree. Arthur believed in reason, and he believed in spirits, and he held both beliefs at once, even when they contradicted each other. That is a very human thing to do. We all hold beliefs that do not fit together, and we all find ways to live with them. Arthur’s story shows that even a brilliant mind can be led astray by grief, by hope, and by the wish to see a loved one again. It is a reminder to be humble about our own beliefs, and to listen to friends who tell us we may be wrong, even when we do not want to hear it.

If I could speak to him, I would thank him for Holmes and Watson, for Baker Street, for the Hound of the Baskervilles, and for the many hours of pleasure his stories have given readers all over the world. I would tell him that his historical novels are good, but that Holmes is great, and that he should be proud of him. I would also tell him, gently, that the fairies were paper, and that his son’s memory lives in his heart, not in a séance room. I do not know if he would listen, and I do not expect him to. But I think it is worth saying, because a man who gave the world a detective who loved the truth should also be told the truth, kindly, by those who admire him.

In the end, I see Arthur Conan Doyle as a man of two minds, a doctor and a dreamer, a logician and a believer, a writer who created the most rational character in literature and who spent his life chasing the irrational. That contradiction makes him more interesting, not less, and it makes his story worth telling. He gave us Holmes, and Holmes gave us a way of thinking, a way of looking, and a way of solving problems that we still use today. That is a legacy to be proud of, and it is one that will last as long as people read books and love a good mystery.

I also think about the way Holmes is still with us, in films, in television, in new books by other writers, and in the minds of readers who have never read Conan Doyle at all. A character who lives for a hundred years after his creator has died is a rare thing, and it shows how strong the creation was. Holmes is not only a detective. He is a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world with clear eyes, and a reminder that small details matter. That is a gift, and it is one that Arthur Conan Doyle gave to the world, even if he did not always value it as much as he should have. I am glad his readers valued it, and I am glad they would not let Holmes die.

I also think about the way Holmes has been played by so many actors, in so many countries, and how each one brings something new to him, while the character stays the same. Basil Rathbone played him in the 1940s, Jeremy Brett played him on television in the 1980s, and Benedict Cumberbatch plays him today, in a modern London, with a mobile phone. Each Holmes is different, and each one is true, because Conan Doyle created a character who is larger than any single actor. That is a rare thing, and it shows how strong the creation was. A character who can live in many times, in many places, and in many forms, is a character who will live for ever, and Holmes is such a character.

I think about Watson, too, because he is the heart of the stories. Holmes is cold and clever, but Watson is warm and loyal, and he is the reader’s friend in the stories. He tells us what Holmes is doing, he asks the questions we would ask, and he loves Holmes even when Holmes is difficult. That friendship, between a brilliant man and a kind man, is one of the great friendships in literature, and it is why the stories are loved, not only for their puzzles, but for their humanity. Conan Doyle created two men, not one, and the pair together is greater than either one alone. That is a lesson for any writer: a great hero needs a great friend, and a great story needs a heart as well as a mind.

I also think about the way his stories are read by young people who want to be detectives, or writers, or doctors, and who see in Conan Doyle a man who was all three. He was a doctor who became a writer, a writer who became a detective in real life, and a detective who became a legend. That is a life with many chapters, and each one is worth reading, because it shows that a person does not have to be only one thing. A doctor can write, a writer can solve crimes, and a man who believes in logic can also believe in spirits, even when the two do not fit together. That is a human life, in all its contradiction, and it is worth telling in full.

I also think about the way his books are taught in schools, where students learn to follow a clue, to watch for a detail, and to think before they speak. A teacher who gives a class The Hound of the Baskervilles is teaching more than a story; she is teaching a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world with care. That is a gift that Conan Doyle gave to teachers, and to students, and it is one that will last as long as his books are read.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Arthur Conan Doyle born?

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the second of ten children, and he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where he was taught by Dr. Joseph Bell.

Who inspired Sherlock Holmes?

Holmes was inspired in part by Dr. Joseph Bell, a surgeon at Edinburgh who could tell a great deal about a patient from small details. Conan Doyle gave Holmes Bell’s gift of observation and his method of reasoning from small clues.

When was the first Sherlock Holmes story published?

The first Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887. The short stories in The Strand Magazine from 1891 made Holmes famous, and readers waited each month for the next story.

Did Conan Doyle really try to kill Sherlock Holmes?

Yes, in The Final Problem in 1893, Holmes and Professor Moriarty fell together over the Reichenbach Falls, and Conan Doyle meant it to be the end. Readers were furious, and he later brought Holmes back in The Adventure of the Empty House in 1903.

What is The Hound of the Baskervilles?

It is a Holmes novel published in 1901 and 1902, set before Holmes’s death, in which Holmes investigates a curse on the Baskerville family in Devon, with a great black hound on the moors. It is one of the most famous Holmes stories.

What did Conan Doyle believe about spiritualism?

In his later years, after losing his son Kingsley in the First World War, he became a strong believer in spiritualism, the idea that the dead could speak to the living. He lectured and wrote about it, and he believed the Cottingley Fairies photographs were real, though they were later shown to be faked.

When did Arthur Conan Doyle die?

He died on 7 July 1930 at his home in Crowborough, Sussex, at the age of seventy-one. He left behind the Holmes stories, historical novels, The Lost World, and many books on spiritualism.