Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is undoubtedly best known for the Holmes canon, which is widely regarded as his defining work. Before creating the great detective, however, he had previously published a number of short, dark mysteries, including “The Captain of the Polestar” (1883) and “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” (1884), a fictional account of the Mary Celeste, which were both inspired by his time as a ship’s doctor. Holmes brought Conan Doyle huge public acclaim, but he soon tired of his creation, wishing instead to concentrate on “better things.” He wrote many other works during the “Great Hiatus” and after The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, including historical epics, fantasy adventures, and deep psychological pieces. Sadly for the author, none are as well remembered.

Published a year after A Study in Scarlet, this is a Gothic mystery set in Scotland involving a family secret and long-awaited revenge. The appearance of the three mysterious Buddhist monks in a remote area has distinct echoes of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), one of Conan Doyle’s favorite novels as a youth.

Conan Doyle’s first critical success as a novelist, this novel records the events of the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 that sought to replace the Catholic King James with a Protestant rival. Events are seen through the eyes of Micah Clarke, a young boy who falls under the influence of a world-weary soldier of fortune. Becoming disillusioned with the religious extremism around him, Micah concludes that tolerance is vital for the good of us all. Micah may have expressed Conan Doyle’s own views as a disillusioned former Catholic.

This historic novel was Conan Doyle’s first attempt to emulate Sir Walter Scott, who he admired. Set in England, France, and Spain, it follows the campaign of Edward, the Black Prince, to restore Peter of Castile to the throne in 1366–67. The hero, a knight, is Sir Nigel Loring, who Conan Doyle returns to in his later novel, Sir Nigel, in 1906.

Set during the reign of King Louis XIV of France (1638–1715), the central theme of this historic novel is the persecution of Protestant Huguenots through the revocation of their civil rights. Well-researched and richly detailed, it follows the tale of a Huguenot guardsman, Amory de Catinat, and his eventual emigration to America, where many Protestants settled.

Written when his first wife was terminally ill, this is considered to be one of Conan Doyle’s most personally revealing tales, exploring the power of the mind and sexual obsession. Here, the repellent parasitic mesmerist, Miss Penclosa, controls the minds of the young Professor Gilroy and his fiancée, and is determined to destroy their relationship. Unsuccessful, it was later withdrawn by Conan Doyle.

A departure in style for Conan Doyle, this is a thinly disguised biographical piece in which he drew on various incidents from his own life. It takes the form of twelve long letters written by J. Stark Munro, a recent medical graduate, to his friend Herbert Swanborough in the US. The letters detail his failed attempt to build a medical practice with the brilliant but unorthodox James Cullingworth, reflecting Conan Doyle’s early life.

Based on the real-life Baron de Marbot, Conan Doyle’s comic character, Brigadier Gerard, is a swaggering, vain officer in Napoleon’s army, yet is also brave, imaginative, and resourceful. He initially appeared in the pages of The Strand Magazine, with the first short stories published in book form in 1896. The Adventures of Gerard followed in 1903.

Set against a backdrop of bare-knuckle boxing at the time of the Prince Regent, this novel weaves together the coming-of-age of the narrator, Rodney Stone, and a murder mystery. Conan Doyle drew on the life of famous dandy Beau Brummell and many contemporary chronicles to capture the flavor of the period. He came to regard this novel as one of his successes.

This novel tells the story of a group of European tourists who, while sailing up the Nile in a boat called the Korosko, are attacked and abducted by a marauding band of Dervish warriors. It is a clear defense of British I mperialism, and in particular, its reach into North Africa. It also reveals the very great suspicion of Islam felt by many Europeans at the time.

This fantasy novel introduces another of Conan Doyle’s fascinating characters: Professor George Edward Challenger, an irascible, red-haired explorer, much given to losing his temper with anyone who disagrees with him. Like Holmes, Professor Challenger was based on a real person, here William Rutherford, a professor of physiology who had lectured at the University of Edinburgh while Conan Doyle studied medicine. The imaginative plot concerns Challenger’s expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin, where dinosaurs still survive. Highly influential, it inspired many later works in which prehistoric monsters are loose in the modern world, including the 1993 movie, Jurassic Park. Challenger returned in the novels The Poison Belt (1913) and The Land of Mist (1926).

Conan Doyle wrote this piece having been fooled by the “Cottingley Fairies.” In 1917 two young cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, claimed that there were fairies in their garden, and produced their own photographs as proof. Duped, Conan Doyle enthusiastically endorsed the girls’ story, hoping to encourage the belief in spiritualism. It had the opposite effect; he was mocked in the press, and his credulity was called into question. The truth only came out in 1983 when the perpetrators said they’d always felt guilty for fooling Conan Doyle, and for holding him up to the ridicule he suffered.

Subtitled The Lost World Under the Sea, this was Conan Doyle’s last work. It is a short novel about the discovery of the sunken city of Atlantis by a team of explorers led by Professor Maracot. He is accompanied on the adventure by Cyrus Headley, a young research zoologist, and Bill Scanlan, an expert mechanic who built the submersible that carries them to the bottom of the Atlantic. This tale is regarded as being part science fiction and part spiritualist sermon, with the Atlanteans demonstrating the movement’s high ideals.

This is a compilation of short stories written by Conan Doyle between 1890 and 1921. It includes “The Ring of Thoth” (1890) about an ancient Egyptian mummy coming back to life, which, along with his “Lot No. 249” (1892), inspired the 1932 movie, The Mummy, featuring Boris Karloff. Also, his atmospheric ghost story, “The Captain of the Polestar” (1883), echoes images from the climax of Mary Shelley’s 1818 Gothic classic, Frankenstein.