Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, the son of Charles Altamont Doyle, a civil servant and talented but troubled artist who succumbed to alcoholism and epilepsy, and Mary Foley Doyle, a formidable, well-read woman who filled her son’s imagination with stories of chivalry and heraldry. The Doyles were an artistic Irish-Catholic family — Arthur’s uncle Richard Doyle was a famous illustrator for Punch — but the household was shadowed by Charles’s decline.

Life and Career

Doyle was educated at Jesuit schools — Hodder Place and Stonyhurst College — and at the University of Edinburgh, where he studied medicine. His mentor there, Dr. Joseph Bell, whose extraordinary powers of observation and deductive reasoning allowed him to diagnose patients before they spoke, provided the model for Sherlock Holmes. Doyle qualified as a physician in 1881 and set up practice in Southsea, Portsmouth, where the paucity of patients gave him time to write.

A Study in Scarlet (1887), introducing Holmes and Watson, was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for a fee of 25 pounds outright — one of the worst bargains in literary history. It attracted little notice. The second Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four (1890), appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine. It was the short stories, published in The Strand Magazine from 1891 onward — beginning with “A Scandal in Bohemia” — that created the Holmes phenomenon. The Strand’s circulation soared; when Doyle killed Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls in “The Final Problem” (1893), twenty thousand subscribers cancelled their subscriptions and young City men wore black crepe armbands.

Doyle, who always considered himself a serious historical novelist rather than a writer of detective stories, was exasperated by Holmes’s popularity. He brought Holmes back in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–1902), set before the Reichenbach incident, and then fully resurrected him in “The Adventure of the Empty House” (1903), bowing to public demand and financial incentive — the Strand paid him enormous sums.

Beyond Holmes, Doyle wrote the Professor Challenger science fiction novels (beginning with The Lost World, 1912), historical romances (The White Company, 1891; Sir Nigel, 1906), and military histories. He was knighted in 1902 for his pamphlet defending British conduct in the Boer War. After the First World War, in which he lost his son Kingsley, his brother Innes, and two nephews, Doyle became a passionate advocate of Spiritualism, devoting his final decade and much of his fortune to the cause — a commitment that damaged his reputation among rationalists and provided a supreme irony: the creator of the most rational fictional detective embraced the most irrational of beliefs.

He died on 7 July 1930 at Windlesham, his home in Crowborough, Sussex.

Major Works and Themes

The Sherlock Holmes stories are the foundation of modern detective fiction. Holmes — the consulting detective of 221B Baker Street, master of deductive reasoning, cocaine user, violin player, and the most vividly drawn character in English fiction after Shakespeare — is a figure of such vitality that he has transcended his creator entirely.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) is the masterpiece: a Gothic thriller set on the Dartmoor moors that combines Holmes’s rational method with an atmosphere of supernatural menace. It is the most famous detective novel ever written.

The four novels and fifty-six short stories (the “Canon,” as devotees call it) are not uniformly excellent — the later stories show signs of fatigue — but at their best they achieve a perfection of plotting, atmosphere, and character that has never been surpassed in the genre. The early Strand stories — “A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Red-Headed League,” “The Speckled Band,” “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” — are the summit.

Critical Reception and Legacy

Doyle was enormously popular in his lifetime and has remained so. Holmes is the most adapted character in literary history (Guinness World Records has certified him as such), appearing in thousands of films, television programmes, radio plays, stage adaptations, and pastiches. The Baker Street Irregulars, the premier Sherlockian literary society, have been meeting since 1934.

The critical rehabilitation of the Holmes stories as serious literature has been slower but is now well advanced. The stories are studied as masterpieces of the short story form, as documents of Victorian and Edwardian social history, and as foundational texts of the detective genre.

Key Works

• A Study in Scarlet (1887)
• The Sign of the 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 (1905)
• The Valley of Fear (1915)
• His Last Bow (1917)
• The Lost World (1912)
• The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

Collecting Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes form one of the most active and well-documented collecting areas in the English-speaking world, with a bibliography that spans novels, short story collections, periodical appearances, and Sherlockian ephemera.

Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887, containing the first appearance of A Study in Scarlet, is the ultimate Doyle collectible and one of the rarest items in detective fiction. Fewer than thirty copies are believed to survive. When copies surface at auction, they command $100,000–$300,000 or more. In 2007, a copy sold at Sotheby’s for $156,000.

A Study in Scarlet in its first separate book edition (1888, Ward, Lock & Co., London) is more attainable but still scarce: fine copies bring $20,000–$80,000.

The Sign of the Four first appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine (February 1890) and was first published in book form by Spencer Blackett (1890, London). First editions in the original cloth bring $10,000–$40,000.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892, George Newnes, London), the first collection of short stories, with illustrations by Sidney Paget, is one of the most sought-after Victorian first editions. Fine copies in the original blue cloth with gilt decoration bring $10,000–$30,000.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902, George Newnes, London) is the most famous Holmes title. The first edition in red cloth with gilt lettering brings $5,000–$20,000 in fine condition.

The original Strand Magazine issues containing the first appearances of the Holmes stories are an active and accessible collecting area. Complete runs of the Holmes stories in the Strand are assembled by dedicated collectors; individual issues bring $100–$2,000 depending on the story and condition.

Doyle autograph material is available. He was a prolific correspondent and a willing signer, and signed letters are available at $1,000–$5,000. Signed copies of Holmes first editions carry a substantial premium. The major Doyle archives are at the Toronto Reference Library, the British Library, and the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Richard Lancelyn Green bequest in Portsmouth.