In order to help Arthur escape his depressing home background, Mrs. Doyle scraped enough money together to send him to Stonyhurst College, a strict Jesuit boarding school situated in an isolated part of Lancashire. It was at this establishment that he began to question his religious beliefs, and by the time he left the school in 1875 he had firmly rejected Christianity. Instead he began a lifelong search for some other belief to embrace—a search that eventually led him to spiritualism. It was also at Stonyhurst that he encountered a fellow pupil named Moriarty—a name that he would use to great effect later, in his writings. Conan Doyle was always picking up trifles and tidbits of information, ideas, and concepts that he encountered and stored away with the idea of possibly using them in the future.

After studying for a further year with the Jesuits in Feldkirch in Austria, Conan Doyle surprised his artistic family by choosing to study medicine at Edinburgh University. During his time at the university—1876 to 1881—he encountered two professors who would later serve as models for his characters. In his autobiography, Memories and Adventures (1924), he describes Professor Rutherford with his “Assyrian beard, his prodigious voice, his enormous chest and his singular manner”—characteristics that Conan Doyle would later assign to the colorful Professor George Edward Challenger, the central character in his famous science-fiction novel The Lost World (1912). Even more significant was his association with Dr. Joseph Bell, whose method of deducing the history and circumstances of his patients appeared little short of magical. Here was the model and inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, and it is interesting to note that the first collection of Holmes short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), is dedicated “To My Old Teacher Joseph Bell.” It has been said that Conan Doyle looked upon Bell as a father figure because he lacked one at home.

To help to pay his university tuition and assist his mother with the upkeep of the family, Conan Doyle undertook many part-time jobs, including that of medical assistant in Birmingham, Sheffield, and Shropshire. He even served as a ship’s doctor on an Arctic whaler, another experience that provided material for his writing—particularly the ghost story “The Captain of the Polestar” (1890), and “The Adventure of Black Peter”.

Conan Doyle is pictured here at work in the garden of Bignell Wood—the family’s rural retreat in the New Forest, Hampshire—during the late 1920s.

After graduating in 1882, Conan Doyle became a partner in a medical practice in Plymouth, Devon, with Dr. George Turnaville Budd, who had been a fellow student at Edinburgh University. Budd was an eccentric and volatile man and the partnership soon disintegrated, leaving Conan Doyle to pack his bags and set up a practice on his own in Southsea, Hampshire. By this time he had already tried his hand at writing fiction and had several short stories published, but it was while in Southsea that he made a more determined effort to achieve success as an author. As he slowly built up his medical practice, Conan Doyle toyed with the idea of creating a detective story in which the protagonist—a character called Sherrinford Holmes—solved a crime by deductive reasoning in the manner of Joseph Bell. In Memories and Adventures he observed: “Reading some detective stories, I was struck by the fact that their results were obtained in nearly every case by chance. I thought I would try my hand at writing a story in which the hero would treat crime as Dr. Bell treated disease and where science would take the place of romance.” This idea materialized in the form of the novel A Study in Scarlet, with Sherrinford becoming Sherlock—and a legend was born. It was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887; Conan Doyle accepted the meager fee of £25, and in so doing relinquished all claims to the copyright.

Following the publication of A Study in Scarlet, Conan Doyle turned his attention to historical fiction—his first love, inspired by his mother’s stories and his admiration for the works of Sir Walter Scott. The result was Micah Clarke (1889), a tale based on the Monmouth Rebellion. It was a great critical and financial success, and it was this that convinced Conan Doyle that his future lay in writing.

The US-based Lippincott’s Magazine commissioned a second Sherlock Holmes novel in 1890, and he produced The Sign of Four in less than a month. However, it wasn’t until 1891, when The Strand Magazine began the series of 12 short stories (later known as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) that the character of Holmes really struck a chord with the public. It was Conan Doyle who had approached the Strand in the first instance: “It had struck me that a single character running through a series, if it only engaged the reader, would bind the reader to that magazine.” And that is exactly what happened. Within six months of the Baker Street detective’s first appearance in the Strand, in “A Scandal in Bohemia”, the main selling point of the magazine was each new Holmes adventure.

Founded in 1891, The Strand Magazine was an illustrated monthly featuring short stories, including the highly popular Sherlock Holmes tales, which appeared in complete form.

Meanwhile, in 1885, Conan Doyle had married Louise (“Touie”) Hawkins, the sister of one of his patients. It was a union that was dogged by Louise’s constant ill health. In 1891, the couple moved from Southsea to Tennison Road in South Norwood, southeast London, so Conan Doyle could be closer to the literary world. However, after giving birth to two children, Mary (1889) and Kingsley (1892), Louise was diagnosed with tuberculosis; her condition declined rapidly, and she remained an invalid for the rest of her life. In 1894, they left London and moved into a new house—Undershaw, in Hindhead, Surrey—since Conan Doyle believed the air would be better for Louise’s health.

Despite the success of the first series of Holmes tales, Conan Doyle quickly became bored with his creation, and although he succumbed to the offer of an increased fee for a second series, he was determined that this should be the last. He wanted to spend more time writing historical fiction, which he saw as a more worthy pursuit, and one that would gain him greater recognition as a serious author.

In 1893, he visited Switzerland with Louise. It was while he was there that he visited the Reichenbach Falls and decided that this was a place that would “make a worthy tomb for poor Sherlock, even if I buried my banking account along with him.” So in the last story of the second collection, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893), he consigned his hero to the watery depths of the Reichenbach Falls, locked in the arms of the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.

Ignoring the public howls of complaint about his murder of Holmes, he concentrated on a wide range of other writing projects, including a tale of Regency life (Rodney Stone, 1896), a novel about the Napoleonic wars (Uncle Bernac, 1897), and many short stories.

As Conan Doyle’s stature as a writer and his wealth both grew, he became increasingly involved in public life and the literary scene. Among his distinguished friends and acquaintances was a set of authors who, like Conan Doyle, had created remarkable characters who would resonate with the public long after their deaths: Bram Stoker (Dracula); J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan); Robert Louis Stevenson (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde); and Oscar Wilde (Dorian Gray).

Conan Doyle was actively engaged in the Boer War (1899–1902), offering medical assistance at the Langman Field Hospital in Bloemfontein in South Africa in appalling conditions and visiting the front; he later wrote up the history of the war and a pamphlet vindicating the actions of the British Army.

It was at the turn of the century that Conan Doyle hit upon a plot for a new mystery story—The Hound of the Baskervilles. Constructing the framework of the story with the aid of his friend, journalist Fletcher Robinson, the author realized that he needed a central character to play detective, and so he resurrected Sherlock Holmes. The novel was set in 1889, two years before Holmes supposedly fell to his death at the Reichenbach Falls. It was first serialized in the Strand in 1901 and published in book form in 1902. In the same year, Conan Doyle was given a knighthood in recognition of his pamphlet on the Boer War and service at the front—although many felt that the honor was more of a thank-you for bringing about the return of Sherlock Holmes. By 1904, the author succumbed to the offers of large fees and began writing more Holmes short stories.

In the 1920s, magician and escape artist Houdini put on shows to expose false psychics and mediums. He had been friendly with Conan Doyle, but the two men fell out over a séance.

Conan Doyle’s relationship with his wife Louise was a strong friendship rather than a passionate romance, and it wasn’t until he met Jean Leckie that he experienced the full emotional force of romantic love. He first encountered this attractive Scottish woman—14 years his junior—in 1897, and fell head over heels in love with her. He confessed to his mother how he felt about Jean and told close friends, too, who were divided on the subject; Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, E. W. Hornung (the writer of the Raffles detective stories), was furious at what he considered to be infidelity. However, Conan Doyle was not physically unfaithful to Louise. His strong personal code of chivalry forbade him to take his affair with Jean into the realms of sexual congress. Nevertheless, the strain must have placed Conan Doyle upon the psychological rack. His fondness and sense of duty to his invalid wife kept him by her side, while at the same time his passion for Jean tormented both his heart and mind.

Louise died in 1906, and Conan Doyle married Jean a year later. Shortly after the wedding, they moved to a new house—Little Windlesham, in Crowborough, Sussex. It was a happy marriage, and Jean bore Conan Doyle three more children: Denis (1909), Adrian (1910), and Lena Jean (1912).

Conan Doyle on the way to the US in the 1920s with his second wife Jean and their children (from left): Lena Jean, Denis, and Adrian.

It was during this period that Conan Doyle became involved in a personal fight to establish the innocence of a Parsee, George Edalji, convicted of horse and cattle maiming in Warwickshire. Using the methods of his detective hero, Conan Doyle was able to establish that Edalji could not have performed the savage attacks on the animals because of his very poor eyesight. (The writer Julian Barnes, fascinated by the case, recounted the story in his 2005 historical novel Arthur & George, which was later dramatized and broadcast on television in 2015).

In addition, there were other causes that Conan Doyle took up where he felt that injustice had been wrought. His moral standards prompted him to investigate matters where he believed that misjudgments had been made. Notably, he campaigned to have the death penalty lifted from Roger Casement, a traitor during World War I, but he was not successful. Similarly, he protested the innocence of Oscar Slater, a German Jew accused of murder: thanks to Conan Doyle’s efforts, Slater was finally released in 1927 after serving 18 years of a life sentence.

The “Cottingley Fairies” photos, faked by two young girls in 1917, fooled many people—including Conan Doyle—into believing fairies existed. The girls cut out illustrations from magazines, securing them in place with hat pins.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Conan Doyle became instrumental in forming the local volunteer force—a forerunner of the Home Guard—and acted as a war correspondent, visiting the battlefronts. Perhaps it was the senseless slaughter of so many young lives that revitalized his interest in spiritualism, for in 1916 he became convinced that he should devote his final years to the advancement of this belief. It was a decision that was further strengthened by the tragic death of his son, Kingsley, who passed away at the age of 26 after succumbing to pneumonia following his wounding on the Somme in 1918.

In the last decade of his life, Conan Doyle gave most of his time and energy to lecturing on spiritualism in Australia, the US, Canada, and South Africa. He was careful and thorough in testing mediums, but there were occasions on which he was deceived, and his critics seized upon these to illustrate what they regarded as his credulity. Certainly, when two young girls claimed to have seen and photographed fairies in a watery dell near their home in Cottingley, Yorkshire, and Conan Doyle (together with Edward Gardner, a leading Theosophist) declared them to be genuine, he appeared very gullible.

It was Conan Doyle’s obsession with spiritualism and his search for proof of a life beyond death that led him into a brief friendship with the magician Harry Houdini, who was also a spiritualist. The two men eventually fell out after a séance in which Lady Jean Conan Doyle (Arthur’s wife), acting as a medium, apparently received a written message from Houdini’s dead mother. As the magician’s mother was a Hungarian Jew and couldn’t speak or write a word of English, Houdini denounced the séance as being false. The magician also later wrote a mocking article about the incident, sealing the rift between the two men.

The spiritualist tours were arduous and physically draining, and Conan Doyle’s health suffered as a result. He was now in his late sixties, but it appeared that he was making no allowances for his advancing age. In 1929, he suffered severe pains in his chest and was diagnosed with angina. The doctors advised that he cancel all his spiritualist lectures, but the author was adamant that he would not let the public down by failing to honor his engagements. On his way to the Albert Hall, he suffered a violent attack, and from then on all physical exertion was forbidden. Some little time later he was discovered lying in the hallway of his home, clutching a single white snowdrop in his hand. He had seen the flowers through the window and had struggled from his sickbed to take one of the blooms.

By now, Conan Doyle knew he was dying. A few days before his death he wrote: “The reader will judge that I have had many adventures. The greatest and most glorious awaits me now.” He informed his family that he did not wish to pass away in bed, so they helped him to a chair where he could look through the window at the Sussex countryside beyond, and he died there surrounded by his family on the morning of July 7, 1930. His last words were to his beloved Jean: “You are wonderful.”

He was buried in the garden of his home at Windlesham, but his remains were later moved to the nearby churchyard at Minstead. The inscription on his gravestone is “Steel True, Blade Straight.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a remarkable man in all areas of his life. His literary output covers perhaps a wider range than any other writer of the 19th and early 20th centuries: as well as detective stories, he wrote poetry, plays, domestic dramas, sea stories, historical romances, supernatural chillers, medical tales, and various spiritualist tracts.

However, as well as being a remarkable author, he was also a brilliant, energetic, innovative man with strong personal visions, attitudes, and ideas—a Victorian with a 20th-century outlook. His passion drove him to pursue a wide range of activities: he ran for parliament (unsuccessfully); he played cricket for the MCC, once capturing the wicket of the great W. G. Grace; he promoted cross-country skiing in Switzerland; he was one of the first car owners; he had a keen interest in photography and contributed articles on the subject to The British Journal of Photography; and, of course, he was also a doctor—a title that he prized above all others. With so many outstanding and fascinating qualities, it is not surprising that his most famous literary creation—Sherlock Holmes—was imbued with a similar kind of brilliance.

Conan Doyle’s final resting place is with his second wife Jean in the graveyard at the Church of All Saints in Minstead, Hampshire.