74 Facts About Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician.

Conan Doyle created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr Watson.

Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Conan Doyle's father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was born in England, of Irish Catholic descent, and his mother, Mary, was Irish Catholic.

Conan Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatric illness.

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Conan Doyle then went on to Stonyhurst College, which he attended until 1875.

Conan Doyle commented later in his life that this academic system could only be excused "on the plea that any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort of mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind".

Conan Doyle found the school harsh, noting that, instead of compassion and warmth, it favoured the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation.

Conan Doyle's family decided that he would spend a year there in order to perfect his German and broaden his academic horizons.

Conan Doyle later rejected the Catholic faith and became an agnostic.

From 1876 to 1881, Conan Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh Medical School; during this period he spent time working in Aston, Sheffield and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire.

Conan Doyle's first published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in South Africa, was printed in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal on 6 September 1879.

Conan Doyle was the doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880.

In 1882, Conan Doyle partnered with his former classmate George Turnavine Budd in a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Conan Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.

Conan Doyle was a staunch supporter of compulsory vaccination and wrote several articles advocating the practice and denouncing the views of anti-vaccinators.

Conan Doyle had previously studied at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital in order to qualify to perform eye tests and prescribe glasses.

Conan Doyle opened a small office and consulting room at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, or 2 Devonshire Place as it was then.

Conan Doyle felt grievously exploited by Ward Lock as an author new to the publishing world, and so, after this, he left them.

Conan Doyle wrote the first five Holmes short stories from his office at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, which is marked by a memorial plaque.

In December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Conan Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem".

In 1903, Conan Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, "The Adventure of the Empty House", in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to make it look as if he too were dead.

Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels by Conan Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.

Between 1888 and 1906, Conan Doyle wrote seven historical novels, which he and many critics regarded as his best work.

Conan Doyle wrote nine other novels, and—later in his career —five narratives featuring the irascible scientist Professor Challenger.

Conan Doyle was a prolific author of short stories, including two collections set in Napoleonic times and featuring the French character Brigadier Gerard.

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Conan Doyle was a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club.

In 1900, Conan Doyle founded the Undershaw Rifle Club at his home, constructing a 100-yard range and providing shooting for local men, as the poor showing of British troops in the Boer War had led him to believe that the general population needed training in marksmanship.

Conan Doyle was a champion of "miniature" rifle clubs, whose members shot small-calibre firearms on local ranges.

Conan Doyle went on to sit on the Rifle Clubs Committee of the National Rifle Association.

In 1901, Conan Doyle was one of three judges for the world's first major bodybuilding competition, which was organised by the "Father of Bodybuilding", Eugen Sandow.

Also a keen golfer, Conan Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club in Sussex for 1910.

Conan Doyle had moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with Jean Leckie, his second wife, and resided there with his family from 1907 until his death in July 1930.

Conan Doyle entered the English Amateur billiards championship in 1913.

Conan Doyle wrote an article, "An Alpine Pass on 'Ski" for the December 1894 issue of The Strand Magazine, in which he described his experiences with skiing and the beautiful alpine scenery that could be seen in the process.

Conan Doyle was the youngest daughter of J Hawkins, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, and the sister of one of Doyle's patients.

Conan Doyle had met and fallen in love with Jean in 1897, but had maintained a platonic relationship with her while his first wife was still alive, out of loyalty to her.

Conan Doyle had two with his first wife: Mary Louise and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley.

Conan Doyle had an additional three with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart, who became the second husband of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani; Adrian Malcolm ; and Jean Lena Annette.

Conan Doyle served as a volunteer physician in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900, during the Second Boer War in South Africa.

The latter work was widely translated, and Conan Doyle believed it was the reason he was knighted by King Edward VII in the 1902 Coronation Honours.

Conan Doyle stood for Parliament twice as a Liberal Unionist: in 1900 in Edinburgh Central; and in 1906 in the Hawick Burghs.

Conan Doyle received a respectable share of the vote, but was not elected.

Conan Doyle served as a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey beginning in 1902, and was appointed a Knight of Grace of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem in 1903.

Conan Doyle became acquainted with Morel and Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, they inspired several characters that appear in his 1912 novel The Lost World.

Conan Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save him, arguing that Casement had been driven mad, and therefore should not be held responsible for his actions.

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In 1914, Doyle was one of fifty-three leading British authors—including H G Wells, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy—who signed their names to the "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the First World War.

Conan Doyle was a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused.

Apart from helping George Edalji, Conan Doyle's work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice, as it was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907.

Conan Doyle ended up paying most of the costs for Slater's successful 1928 appeal.

Conan Doyle had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects and remained fascinated by the idea of paranormal phenomena, even though the strength of his belief in their reality waxed and waned periodically over the years.

In 1887, in Southsea, influenced by Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, a member of the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Society, Conan Doyle began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums.

Conan Doyle praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations that he believed had been produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina Crandon, both of whom were later exposed as frauds.

Conan Doyle wrote a piece in Light magazine about his faith and began lecturing frequently on spiritualism.

Conan Doyle found solace in supporting spiritualism's ideas and the attempts of spiritualists to find proof of an existence beyond the grave.

Conan Doyle was a member of the renowned supernaturalist organisation The Ghost Club.

Conan Doyle debated the psychiatrist Harold Dearden, who vehemently disagreed with Conan Doyle's belief that many cases of diagnosed mental illness were the result of spirit possession.

In 1920, Conan Doyle travelled to Australia and New Zealand on spiritualist missionary work, and over the next several years, until his death, he continued his mission, giving talks about his spiritualist conviction in Britain, Europe, and the United States.

Conan Doyle wrote a novel The Land of Mist centred on spiritualist themes and featuring the character Professor Challenger.

Conan Doyle was friends for a time with the American magician Harry Houdini.

However, according to Ernst, Conan Doyle simply refused to believe that it had been a trick.

Conan Doyle insisted that spiritualist mediums employed trickery, and consistently exposed them as frauds.

Conan Doyle defended Hope, but further evidence of trickery was obtained from other researchers.

Conan Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Laboratory of Psychical Research and predicted that, if he persisted in writing what he called "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Harry Houdini.

In 1927, Conan Doyle gave a filmed interview, in which he spoke about Sherlock Holmes and spiritualism.

Milner noted that Conan Doyle had a plausible motive—namely, revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics—and said that The Lost World appeared to contain several clues referring cryptically to his having been involved in the hoax.

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Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Conan Doyle had provided overt clues to otherwise hidden or suppressed aspects of his way of thinking that seemed to support the idea that Conan Doyle would be involved in such a hoax.

Conan Doyle wanted to be a member of the Royal Society and he was after an MBE [sic].

Conan Doyle made his most ambitious foray into architecture in March 1912, while he was staying at the Lyndhurst Grand Hotel: He sketched the original designs for a third-storey extension and for an alteration of the front facade of the building.

In 1926, Conan Doyle laid the foundation stone for a Spiritualist Temple in Camden, London.

Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, Sussex, on 7 July 1930.

Conan Doyle was first buried on 11 July 1930 in Windlesham rose garden.

Conan Doyle was later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.

Conan Doyle has been commemorated with statues and plaques since his death.

Arthur Conan Doyle is the ostensible narrator of Ian Madden's short story "Cracks in an Edifice of Sheer Reason".