Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest detective of the fictional world. He is known for his logical thinking and marvels the reader by his astute observation and reasoning skills, which helps him solve a crime or a mystery. He is portrayed as a complex and moody character.
The writer Arthur Conan Doyle was the creator of Sherlock Holmes, he was inspired to write a detective novel based on such a character because of his professor Dr. Joseph Bell. As a medical student he was impressed by his professor’s observation of minute details in a patient.
May 22, 2023, marked his 164th birth anniversary. Arthur Conan Doyle was born in the year 1859 in Edinburg, Scotland. He was the second child of Charles Altamont and Mary Foley Doyle. His early Jesuit education began in Lancashire, England, in 1868. Then he studied in Feldkirch, Austria for a year before his return to Edinburg. He further earned his bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery Qualification from Edinburg in 1881. He has more than 300 fictions and 1200 other works like essays, poems, etc. in his lifetime. Sherlock Holmes first appeared in ‘A Study in Scarlet’ published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. He also turned to writing non-fiction which included military writings.
Conan Doyle was knighted in the year 1902 for his great work in the field hospital in South Africa, and also other services rendered during the Boer War. He believed his most important effort in life was in his campaign in support of spiritual, religious and psychic research based on the belief in spirits of the departed continued to exist in hereafter and could be contacted by the people still living. He donated most of his profits and literary efforts to this campaign. He became a renowned supporter of spiritualism, for which he was criticised by many such as the humanist Joseph McCabe and magician Harry Houdini. He published an article ‘The Evidence For Fairies’, in 1921 and a later a book ‘Coming of the Fairies’ in 1922 for which he face a backlash from spiritualists.
Arthur Conan Doyle died in his home in Sussex, on 7th July 1930. Some of his writings are still found in many a book stores.