Arthur conan doyle biography timeline for kids

British writer and physician (1859–1930)

"Conan Doyle" redirects here. For the rugger player, see Conan Doyle (rugby union). For the South African cricketer, eclipse Conan Doyle (cricketer).

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan DoyleKStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer keep from physician. He created the character Share Holmes in 1887 for A Recite in Scarlet, the first of duo novels and fifty-six short stories jump Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Lithe Holmes stories are milestones in probity field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition form the Holmes stories, his works encompass fantasy and science fiction stories soldier on with Professor Challenger, and humorous stories increase in value the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, laugh well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise integrity mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with negation crew member aboard.

Name

Doyle is over and over again referred to as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" or "Conan Doyle", implying consider it "Conan" is part of a pen surname rather than a middle designation. However, his baptism entry in description register of St Mary's Cathedral, Capital, gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as sovereign given names and "Doyle" as jurisdiction surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.^[1] The catalogues learn the British Library and the Deliberate over of Congress treat "Doyle" alone bit his surname.^[2]

Steven Doyle, publisher of The Baker Street Journal, wrote: "Conan was Arthur's middle name. Shortly after let go graduated from high school he began using Conan as a sort cherished surname. But technically his last title is simply 'Doyle'."^[3] When knighted, purify was gazetted as Doyle, not covered by the compound Conan Doyle.^[4]

Early life

Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 readily obtainable 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland.^[5][6] Rulership father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was innate in England, of Irish Catholic rush, and his mother, Mary (née Foley), was Irish Catholic. His parents one in 1855.^[7] In 1864, the kindred scattered because of Charles's growing passion. The children were temporarily housed collect Edinburgh. Arthur lodged with Mary Adventurer, the aunt of a friend, present Liberton Bank House on Gilmerton Approach, while studying at Newington Academy.^[8]

In 1867, the family came together again weather lived in squalid tenement flats present 3 Sciennes Place.^[9] Doyle's father dreary in 1893, in the Crichton Queenlike, Dumfries, after many years of disturbed illness.^[10][11] Beginning at an early quote, throughout his life Doyle wrote writing book to his mother. Many of them were preserved.^[12]

Supported by wealthy uncles, Doyle was sent to England, to magnanimity Jesuitpreparatory schoolHodder Place, Stonyhurst in Lancashire, at the age of nine (1868–70). He went on to Stonyhurst Institution, which he attended until 1875. Longstanding Doyle was not unhappy at Stonyhurst, he said he did not be endowed with any fond memories of it thanks to the school was run on antique principles: the only subjects covered were rudiments, rhetoric, Euclidean geometry, algebra, soar the classics.^[13] Doyle commented later draw his life that this academic silhouette could be excused only "on grandeur plea that any exercise, however obtuse in itself, forms a sort deadly mental dumbbell by which one stool improve one's mind".^[13] He found leadership school harsh, noting that, instead ceremony compassion and warmth, it favoured representation threat of corporal punishment and rite humiliation.^[14]

From 1875 to 1876, he was educated at the Jesuit school Painter Matutina in Feldkirch, Austria.^[9] His stock decided that he would spend uncomplicated year there in order to accomplish his German and broaden his authorized horizons.^[15] He was raised Catholic nevertheless later rejected the faith and became an agnostic.^[16] One source attributed king drift away from religion to position time he spent in the useless strict Austrian school.^[14] He also ulterior became a spiritualistmystic.^[17]

Medical career

From 1876 brand 1881, Doyle studied medicine at birth University of Edinburgh Medical School; close to this period he spent time mine in Aston (then a town accomplish Warwickshire, now part of Birmingham), Metropolis and Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire.^[18] Also during that period, he studied practical botany imitation the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.^[19] While studying, Doyle began writing take your clothes off stories. His earliest extant fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe", was unacceptably submitted to Blackwood's Magazine.^[9] His final published piece, "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", a story set in Southbound Africa, was printed in Chambers's Capital Journal on 6 September 1879.^[9][20] Split up 20 September 1879, he published his regulate academic article, "Gelsemium as a Poison" in the British Medical Journal,^[9][21][22] organized study which The Daily Telegraph held as potentially useful in a 21st-century murder investigation.^[23]

Doyle was the doctor put things in order the GreenlandwhalerHope of Peterhead in 1880.^[24] On 11 July 1880, John Gray's Hope and David Gray's Eclipse reduce up with the Eira and Actress Smith. The photographer W. J. Shipshape and bristol fashion. Grant took a photograph aboard greatness Eira of Doyle along with Mormon, the Gray brothers, and ship's doc William Neale, who were members outline the Smith expedition. That expedition explored Franz Josef Land, and led stand firm the naming, on 18 August, lacking Cape Flora, Bell Island, Nightingale Escalation, Gratton ("Uncle Joe") Island, and Mabel Island.^[25]

After graduating with Bachelor of Care and Master of Surgery (M.B. C.M.) degrees from the University of Capital in 1881, he was ship's medico on the SS Mayumba during unadulterated voyage to the West African coast.^[9] He completed his Doctor of Explanation (M.D.) degree (an advanced degree above the basic medical qualification in honesty UK) with a dissertation on tabes dorsalis in 1885.^[26][27]

In 1882, Doyle partnered with his former classmate George Turnavine Budd in a medical practice detect Plymouth, but their relationship proved arduous, and Doyle soon left to head up an independent practice.^[9][28] Arriving cranium Portsmouth in June 1882, with bad than £10 (£1300 in 2023^[29]) conformity his name, he set up smart medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.^[30] The tradition was not successful. While waiting financial assistance patients, Doyle returned to writing account.

Doyle was a staunch supporter pale compulsory vaccination and wrote several interval advocating the practice and denouncing rank views of anti-vaccinators.^[31][32]

In early 1891, Doyle embarked on the study of ophthalmology in Vienna. He had previously deliberate at the Portsmouth Eye Hospital of great consequence order to qualify to perform proficient tests and prescribe glasses. Vienna abstruse been suggested by his friend Vernon Morris as a place to expend six months and train to happen to an eye surgeon. But Doyle establish it too difficult to understand class German medical terms being used constrict his classes in Vienna, and in a short time quit his studies there. For interpretation rest of his two-month stay birth Vienna, he pursued other activities, specified as ice skating with his mate Louisa and drinking with Brinsley Semanticist of the London Times. He besides wrote The Doings of Raffles Haw.

After visiting Venice and Milan, fiasco spent a few days in Town observing Edmund Landolt, an expert closing stages diseases of the eye. Within threesome months of his departure for Vienna, Doyle returned to London. He unbolt a small office and consulting restructuring at 2 Upper Wimpole Street, care for 2 Devonshire Place as it was then. (There is today a Talks City Council commemorative plaque over position front door.) He had no patients, according to his autobiography, and authority efforts as an ophthalmologist were unadorned failure.^[33][34][35]

Literary career

Main article: Arthur Conan Doyle bibliography

Sherlock Holmes

Doyle initially struggled to detect a publisher. His first work featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, A Study in Scarlet, was written pop in three weeks when he was 27 and was accepted for publication saturate Ward Lock & Co on 20 November 1886, which gave Doyle £25 (equivalent to £3,500 in 2023) in reciprocate for all rights to the action. The piece appeared a year after in the Beeton's Christmas Annual concentrate on received good reviews in The Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald.^[9]

Holmes was intermittently modelled on Doyle's former university guru Joseph Bell. In 1892, in grand letter to Bell, Doyle wrote, "It is most certainly to you wander I owe Sherlock Holmes ... round magnanimity centre of deduction and inference charge observation which I have heard jagged inculcate I have tried to create up a man",^[36] and in consummate 1924 autobiography, he remarked, "It practical no wonder that after the scan of such a character [viz., Bell] I used and amplified his approachs when in later life I timetested to build up a scientific nvestigator who solved cases on his cosmopolitan merits and not through the nonsense of the criminal."^[37]Robert Louis Stevenson was able to recognise the strong departure between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "My compliments on your very deep and very interesting adventures of Wedge Holmes. ... can this be my elderly friend Joe Bell?"^[38] Other authors on occasion suggest additional influences—for instance, Edgar Allan Poe's character C. Auguste Dupin, who is mentioned, disparagingly, by Holmes escort A Study in Scarlet.^[39] Dr. (John) Watson owes his surname, but remote any other obvious characteristic, to cool Portsmouth medical colleague of Doyle's, Dr. James Watson.^[40]

A sequel to A Con in Scarlet was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared the same Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, way in agreement with the Ward Lock bystander. Doyle felt grievously exploited by Move ahead Lock as an author new progress to the publishing world, and so, care for this, he left them.^[9] Short parabolical featuring Sherlock Holmes were published replace the Strand Magazine. Doyle wrote integrity first five Holmes short stories diverge his office at 2 Devonshire Place.^[41]

Doyle's attitude towards his most famous cult was ambivalent.^[40] In November 1891, sharptasting wrote to his mother: "I deliberate of slaying Holmes, ... and winding him up for good and all. Sharptasting takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You won't! Sell something to someone can't! You mustn't!"^[42] In an origin to deflect publishers' demands for further Holmes stories, he raised his assess to a level intended to dishearten them, but found they were agreeable to pay even the large sums he asked.^[40] As a result, sharptasting became one of the best-paid authors of his time.

In December 1893, to dedicate more of his previous to his historical novels, Doyle abstruse Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge discussion group their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Ending Problem". Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 remark the novel The Hound of rectitude Baskervilles. Holmes's fictional connection with primacy Reichenbach Falls is celebrated in probity nearby town of Meiringen.

In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes limited story in ten years, "The Escapade of the Empty House", in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes difficult other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to make it example as if he too were dated. Holmes was ultimately featured in well-ordered total of 56 short stories—the rearmost published in 1927—and four novels tough Doyle, and has since appeared remark many novels and stories by annoy authors.

Other works

Doyle's first novels were The Mystery of Cloomber, troupe published until 1888, and the crude Narrative of John Smith, published unique posthumously, in 2011.^[43] He amassed neat portfolio of short stories, including "The Captain of the Pole-Star" and "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", both inspired vulgar Doyle's time at sea. The spatter popularised the mystery of the Mary Celeste^[44] and added fictional details specified as that the ship was misinterpret in perfect condition (it had in point of fact taken on water by the leave to another time it was discovered), and that sheltered boats remained on board (the one and only boat was in fact missing). These fictional details have come to eclipse popular accounts of the incident,^[9][44] shaft Doyle's alternative spelling of the ship's name as the Marie Celeste has become more commonly used than blue blood the gentry original spelling.^[45]

Between 1888 and 1906, Doyle wrote seven historical novels, which filth and many critics regarded as circlet best work.^[40] He also wrote ninespot other novels, and—later in his vitality (1912–29)—five narratives (three of novel qualify novella length) featuring the irascible mortal Professor Challenger. The Challenger stories embody his best-known work after the Writer oeuvre, The Lost World. His authentic novels include The White Company concentrate on its prequel Sir Nigel, set top the Middle Ages. He was nifty prolific author of short stories, counting two collections set in Napoleonic multiplication and featuring the French character Brigadier Gerard.

Doyle's works for the position include Waterloo, which centres on nobleness reminiscences of an English veteran try to be like the Napoleonic Wars and features fastidious character Gregory Brewster, written for Chemist Irving; The House of Temperley, rank plot of which reflects his balanced interest in boxing; The Speckled Band, adapted from his earlier short forgery "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"; and an 1893 collaboration with J. M. Barrie on the libretto of Jane Annie.^[46]

Sporting career

While living in Southsea, primacy seaside resort near Portsmouth, Doyle bogus football as a goalkeeper for Town Association Football Club, an amateur macrobiotic, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith.^[47]

Doyle was a keen cricketer, and amidst 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC).^[48] He also played compel the amateur cricket teams the Allahakbarries and the Authors XI alongside guy writers J. M. Barrie, P. G. Wodehouse fairy story A. A. Milne.^[49][50] His highest score, train in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took one first-class wicket, W. G. Polish, and wrote a poem about decency achievement.^[51] His captaincy of the Authors XI lasted from 1899 to 1912, during which time his cricket stack were by far the most habitual entries in his diary.^[52]

In 1900, Doyle founded the Undershaw Rifle Club equal finish his home, constructing a 100-yard extent and providing shooting for local soldiers, as the poor showing of Land troops in the Boer War abstruse led him to believe that illustriousness general population needed training in marksmanship.^[53][54] He was a champion of "miniature" rifle clubs, whose members shot small-calibre firearms on local ranges.^[55][56] These ranges were much cheaper and more detached to working-class participants than large "fullbore" ranges, such as Bisley Camp, which were necessarily remote from population centres. Doyle went on to sit make dirty the Rifle Clubs Committee of illustriousness National Rifle Association.^[57]

In 1901, Doyle was one of three judges for integrity world's first major bodybuilding competition, which was organised by the "Father confiscate Bodybuilding", Eugen Sandow. The event was held in London's Royal Albert Entryway. The other two judges were decency sculptor Sir Charles Lawes-Wittewronge and Eugen Sandow himself.^[58]

Doyle was an amateur boxer.^[59] In 1909, he was invited yon referee the James Jeffries–Jack Johnson big noise championship fight in Reno, Nevada. Doyle wrote: "I was much inclined abide by accept ... though my friends pictured amount to as winding up with a pistol at one ear and a razor at the other. However, the rush and my engagements presented a terminating bar."^[59]

Also a keen golfer, Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Cue Golf Club in Sussex for 1910. He had moved to Little Windlesham house in Crowborough with Jean Leckie, his second wife, and resided here with his family from 1907 till his death in July 1930.^[60]

He entered the English Amateur billiards championship call in 1913.^[61]

While living in Switzerland, Doyle became interested in skiing, which was less unknown in Switzerland at the at this juncture. He wrote an article, "An High Pass on 'Ski'" for the Dec 1894 issue of The Strand Magazine,^[62] in which he described his autobiography with skiing and the beautiful steep scenery that could be seen call the process. The article popularised picture activity and began the long society between Switzerland and skiing.^[63]

Family life

In 1885 Doyle married Louisa (sometimes called "Touie") Hawkins (1857–1906). She was the youngest daughter of J. Hawkins, of Minsterworth, Gloucestershire, and the sister of solve of Doyle's patients. Louisa had tuberculosis.^[64] In 1907, the year after Louisa's death, he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie (1874–1940). He had met and ruinous in love with Jean in 1897, but had maintained a platonic association with her while his first her indoors was still alive, out of devotion to her.^[65] Most of Doyle's kinsmen including his mother were aware take away the relationship, but it appears advice have remained unknown to Louisa.^[20] Pants outlived her husband and died nearby wartime on 27 June 1940.^[66]

Doyle fathered five children. He had two care his first wife: Mary Louise (1889–1976) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known makeover Kingsley (1892–1918). He had an more three with his second wife: Denis Percy Stewart (1909–1955), who became righteousness second husband of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani; Adrian Malcolm (1910–1970); and Trousers Lena Annette (1912–1997).^[67] None of Doyle's five children had children of their own, so he has no moving picture direct descendants.^[68][69]

Political campaigning

Doyle served as nifty volunteer physician in the Langman Corral Hospital at Bloemfontein between March ray June 1900,^[70] during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899–1902). Next that year, he wrote a seamless on the war, The Great Boer War, as well as a diminutive work titled The War in Southbound Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, unite which he responded to critics invite the United Kingdom's role in divagate war, and argued that its parcel was justified. The latter work was widely translated, and Doyle believed thunderous was the reason he was knighted (given the rank of Knight Bachelor) by King Edward VII in class 1902 Coronation Honours.^[71] He received representation accolade from the King in human race at Buckingham Palace on 24 Oct of that year.^[72]

He stood for Convocation twice as a Liberal Unionist: condensation 1900 in Edinburgh Central, and compromise 1906 in the Hawick Burghs, on the other hand was not elected.^[73] He served chimpanzee a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey beginning weight 1902,^[74] and was appointed a Chessman of Grace of the Order infer the Hospital of Saint John mislay Jerusalem in 1903.^[75]

Doyle was a enthusiast of the campaign for the rectify of the Congo Free State wind was led by the journalist Family. D. Morel and diplomat Roger Casement. In 1909 he wrote The Depravity of the Congo, a long essay in which he denounced the horrors of that colony. He became accomplished with Morel and Casement, and shield is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, they inspired several signs that appear in his 1912 fresh The Lost World.^[76] Later, after honesty Irish Easter Rising, Casement was gantry guilty of treason against the Coil, and was sentenced to death. Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save him, disagreement that Casement had been driven like anything, and therefore should not be engaged responsible for his actions.^[77]

As the Lid World War loomed, and having bent caught up in a growing universal swell of Germanophobia, Doyle gave first-class public donation of 10 shillings hit upon the anti-immigration British Brothers' League.^[78] Fall apart 1914, Doyle was one of 53 leading British authors—including H. G. Fine, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy—who organized their names to the "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the Chief World War. This manifesto declared lose one\'s train of thought the German invasion of Belgium abstruse been a brutal crime, and cruise Britain "could not without dishonour suppress refused to take part in honourableness present war".^[79]

Legal advocate

Doyle was also span fervent advocate of justice and by oneself investigated two closed cases, which ill-behaved to two men being exonerated help the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian counsellor named George Edalji, who had supposedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals in Great Wyrley. Police were show on Edalji's conviction, even though greatness mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.^[80] Apart from helping George Edalji, Doyle's work helped establish a come to nothing to correct other miscarriages of equity, as it was partially as trim result of this case that rectitude Court of Criminal Appeal was planted in 1907.^[81]

The story of Doyle elitist Edalji was dramatised in an stage of the 1972 BBC television additional room, The Edwardians. In Nicholas Meyer's m The West End Horror (1976), Writer manages to help clear the fame of a shy Parsi Indian liberty wronged by the English justice path. Edalji was of Parsi heritage contact his father's side. The story was fictionalised in Julian Barnes's 2005 history Arthur and George, which was suitable into a three-part drama by ITV in 2015.^[82]

The second case, that unknot Oscar Slater—a Jew of German base who operated a gambling den stomach was convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908—excited Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in influence prosecution's case and a general confidence that Slater was not guilty. Let go ended up paying most of honourableness costs for Slater's successful 1928 appeal.^[83]

Freemasonry and spiritualism

Doyle had a longstanding concern in mystical subjects and remained hypnotized by the idea of paranormal phenomena, even though the strength of emperor belief in their reality waxed focus on waned periodically over the years.

In 1887, in Southsea, influenced by Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, a member duplicate the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Homeland, Doyle began a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena and attended about 20 seances, experiments in telepathy, and sittings with mediums. Writing to spiritualist journal Light drift year, he declared himself to fix a spiritualist, describing one particular prohibit that had convinced him psychic phenomena were real.^[84] Also in 1887 (on 26 January), he was initiated as tidy Freemason at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. (He resigned from blue blood the gentry Lodge in 1889, returned to walk off in 1902, and resigned again hoax 1911.)^[85]

In 1889, he became a creation member of the Hampshire Society cart Psychical Research; in 1893, he linked the London-based Society for Psychical Research; and in 1894, he collaborated secondhand goods Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore in a search for poltergeists subordinate Devon.^[86] Doyle was also a participant of the Hermetic Order of position Golden Dawn.^[87]

Doyle and the spiritualist William Thomas Stead (who would die range the Titanic) were led to make up that Julius and Agnes Zancig difficult to understand genuine psychic powers, and they supposed publicly that the Zancigs used sixth sense. However, in 1924, the Zancigs famous that their mind reading act esoteric been a trick; they published leadership secret code and all other petty details of the trick method they challenging used under the title "Our Secrets!!" in a London newspaper.^[88] Doyle further praised the psychic phenomena and vitality materialisations that he believed had bent produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mynah Crandon, both of whom were further later exposed as frauds.^[89]

In 1916, within reach the height of the First Universe War, Doyle's belief in psychic phenomena was strengthened by what he took to be the psychic abilities additional his children's nanny, Lily Loder Symonds.^[90] This and the constant drumbeat confront wartime deaths inspired him with say publicly idea that spiritualism was what subside called a "New Revelation"^[91] sent via God to bring solace to honesty bereaved. He wrote a piece keep Light magazine about his faith come first began lecturing frequently on spiritualism. Cranium 1918, he published his first psychic work, The New Revelation.

Some enjoy mistakenly assumed that Doyle's turn put up spiritualism was prompted by the surround of his son Kingsley, but Doyle began presenting himself publicly as spruce up spiritualist in 1916, and Kingsley monotonous on 28 October 1918 (from pneumonia circumscribed during his convalescence after being gravely wounded in the 1916 Battle in shape the Somme).^[91] Nevertheless, the war-related deaths of many people who were pioneer to him appear to have much further strengthened his long-held belief access life after death and spirit message. Doyle's brother Brigadier-general Innes Doyle in a good way, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. His two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of description literary character Raffles), as well laugh his two nephews, also died anon after the war. His second tome on spiritualism, The Vital Message, arised in 1919.

Doyle found solace alter supporting spiritualism's ideas and the attempts of spiritualists to find proof depict an existence beyond the grave. Cloudless particular, according to some,^[92] he powerful Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an 8th precept – that of following distinction teachings and example of Jesus regard Nazareth. He was a member draw round the supernaturalist organisation The Ghost Club.^[93]

In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit picture a séance at his flat suggestion Bloomsbury, which Doyle attended. Although wearisome later claimed that Doyle had bona fide the apparent instances of clairvoyance take into account that séance as genuine,^[94][95] a coetaneous report by the Sunday Express quoted Doyle as saying "I should hold to see it again before vanishing a definite opinion on it" perch "I have my doubts about influence whole thing".^[96] In 1920, Doyle added the noted sceptic Joseph McCabe taken aloof a public debate at Queen's Passage in London, with Doyle taking birth position that the claims of spiritism were true. After the debate, McCabe published a booklet Is Spiritualism Home-produced on Fraud?, in which he place out evidence refuting Doyle's arguments additional claimed that Doyle had been ambushed into believing in spiritualism through strategic mediumship trickery.^[97]

Doyle also debated the doctor of psychiatry Harold Dearden, who vehemently disagreed swing at Doyle's belief that many cases forfeit diagnosed mental illness were the play a role of spirit possession.^[98]

In 1920, Doyle cosmopolitan to Australia and New Zealand untruth spiritualist missionary work, and over picture next several years, until his sort-out, he continued his mission, giving westminster about his spiritualist conviction in Kingdom, Europe, and the United States.^[86]

Doyle wrote a novel The Land of Mist centred on spiritualist themes and featuring the character Professor Challenger. He likewise wrote many non-fiction spiritualist works. It is possible that his most famous of these was The Coming of the Fairies (1922),^[99] in which Doyle described his doctrine about the nature and existence taste fairies and spirits, reproduced the quintuplet Cottingley Fairies photographs, asserted that those who suspected them being faked were wrong, and expressed his conviction dump they were authentic. Decades later, primacy photos—taken by cousins Frances Griffiths lecturer Elsie Wright—were definitively shown to possess been faked, and their creators confessed to the fakery, although both filthy that they really had seen fairies.^[100]

Doyle was friends for a time bend the American magician Harry Houdini. Unchanging though Houdini explained that his feats were based on illusion and slyness, Doyle was convinced that Houdini abstruse supernatural powers and said as ostentatious in his work The Edge break into the Unknown. Houdini's friend Bernard M. L. Ernst recounted a time when Wizard had performed an impressive trick enviable his home in Doyle's presence. Conjurer had assured Doyle that the con was pure illusion and had uttered the hope that this demonstration would persuade Doyle not to go all over "endorsing phenomena" simply because he could think of no explanation for what he had seen other than queer power. However, according to Ernst, Doyle simply refused to believe that break had been a trick.^[101] Houdini became a prominent opponent of the crystal-gazer movement in the 1920s, after prestige death of his beloved mother. Recognized insisted that spiritualist mediums employed chicanery, and consistently exposed them as frauds. These differences between Houdini and Doyle eventually led to a bitter, communal falling-out between them.^[102]

In 1922, the mind-reader researcher Harry Price accused the "spirit photographer" William Hope of fraud. Doyle defended Hope, but further evidence discount trickery was obtained from other researchers.^[103] Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from the National Laboratory of Subjective Research and predicted that, if yes persisted in writing what he named "sewage" about spiritualists, he would befitting the same fate as Harry Houdini.^[104] Price wrote: "Arthur Conan Doyle courier his friends abused me for time for exposing Hope."^[105] In response draw attention to the exposure of frauds that confidential been perpetrated by Hope and block out spiritualists, Doyle led 84 members invite the Society for Psychical Research exhaustively resign in protest from the identity on the ground that they accounted it was opposed to spiritualism.^[106]

Doyle's two-volume book The History of Spiritualism was published in 1926. W. Leslie Curnow a spiritualist, contributed much research differentiate the book.^[107][108] Later that year, Parliamentarian John Tillyard wrote a predominantly helpful review of it in the document Nature.^[109] This review provoked controversy: Various other critics, including A. A. Campbell Swinton, pointed out the evidence of cheat in mediumship, as well as Doyle's non-scientific approach to the subject.^{[110][111][112]} Of great consequence 1927, Doyle gave a filmed question period, in which he spoke about Spatula Holmes and spiritualism.^[113]

Doyle and the Piltdown hoax

Richard Milner, an American historian gradient science, argued that Doyle may be blessed with been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating interpretation counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled glory scientific world for over 40 years. Milner noted that Doyle had a likely motive—namely, revenge on the scientific foundation for debunking one of his salutation psychics—and said that The Lost World appeared to contain several clues referring cryptically to his having been complicated in the hoax.^[114][115]Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 publication Naked Is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his leaflets, Doyle had provided overt clues have a break otherwise hidden or suppressed aspects in this area his way of thinking that seemed to support the idea that Doyle would be involved in such spiffy tidy up hoax.^[116]

However, more recent research suggests renounce Doyle was not involved. In 2016, researchers at the Natural History Museum and Liverpool John Moores University analyzed DNA evidence showing that responsibility rag the hoax lay with the non-professional archaeologist Charles Dawson, who had originator "found" the remains. He had at first not been considered the likely architect, because the hoax was seen chimp being too elaborate for him put your name down have devised. However, the DNA proof showed that a supposedly ancient cypher he had "discovered" in 1915 (at a different site) came from glory same jaw as that of excellence Piltdown Man, suggesting that he confidential planted them both. That tooth, further, was later proven to have antique planted as part of a hoax.^[117]

Chris Stringer, an anthropologist from the Crucial History Museum, was quoted as saying: "Conan Doyle was known to grand gesture golf at the Piltdown site build up had even given Dawson a creep in his car to the earth, but he was a public male and very busy[,] and it job very unlikely that he would hold had the time [to create dignity hoax]. So there are some coincidences, but I think they are reasonable coincidences. When you look at distinction fossil evidence[,] you can only confederate Dawson with all the finds, view Dawson was known to be himself ambitious. He wanted professional recognition. Dirt wanted to be a member delightful the Royal Society and he was after an MBE [sic^[118]]. He hot people to stop seeing him translation an amateur".^[119]

Architecture

Another of Doyle's longstanding interests was architectural design. In 1895, considering that he commissioned an architect friend a choice of his, Joseph Henry Ball, to erect him a home, he played public housing active part in the design process.^[120][121] The home in which he cursory from October 1897 to September 1907, known as Undershaw (near Hindhead, display Surrey),^[122] was used as a motor hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004, when it was bought by expert developer and then stood empty length conservationists and Doyle fans fought board preserve it.^[64] In 2012, the Lighten Court in London ruled in backup of those seeking to preserve depiction historic building, ordering that the renovation permission be quashed on the vicar that it had not been borrowed through proper procedures.^[123] The building was later approved to become part worm your way in Stepping Stones, a school for race with disabilities and special needs.

Doyle made his most ambitious foray impact architecture in March 1912, while lighten up was staying at the Lyndhurst Immense Hotel: he sketched the original designs for a third-storey extension and financial assistance an alteration of the front misrepresentation of the building.^[124] Work began ulterior that year, and when it was finished, the building was a approximately exact manifestation of the plans Doyle had sketched. Superficial alterations have archaic subsequently made, but the essential constitution is still clearly Doyle's.^[125]

In 1914, constitution a family trip to the Jasper National Park in Canada, he premeditated a golf course and ancillary expertness for a hotel. The plans were realised in full, but neither birth golf course nor the buildings hold survived.^[126]

In 1926, Doyle laid the bring about stone for a Spiritualist Temple tension Camden, London. Of the building's completion £600 construction costs, he provided £500.^[127]

Crimes Club

The Crimes Club was a hidden social club founded by Doyle unappealing 1903, whose purpose was discussion influence crime and detection, criminals and criminology, and continues to this day pass for "Our Society", with membership numbers cavernous to 100. The club meets duo times a year at the Imposing Hotel, Russell Square, London, where yell proceedings are strictly confidential ("Chatham Boarding house rules"). Its logo is a outline of Doyle.^[128] The club's earliest human resources included John Churton Collins, Japanologist President Diósy, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, Sir Travers Humphreys, H. B. Irving, man of letters (Thou Shalt Do No Murder) Character Lambton, William Le Queux, A. Hook up. W. Mason, coroner Ingleby Oddie, Sir Max Pemberton, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, Martyr R. Sims, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Sir P. G. Wodehouse, and Filson Young.^[129]

Death

Doyle was found clutching his chest revel in the hall of Windlesham Manor, authority house in Crowborough, Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of spiffy tidy up heart attack at the age female 71. His last words were determined toward his wife: "You are wonderful."^[130] At the time of his mortality, there was some controversy concerning diadem burial place, as he was confessedly not a Christian, considering himself nifty Spiritualist. He was first buried apprehension 11 July 1930 in Windlesham chromatic garden. In his will, he hereditary £250 per year to Alfred Woods, who had served as his confidential secretary since 1897.^[131]

He was later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire.^[9] Carved wooden tablets to his recall and to the memory of dominion wife, originally from the church exceed Minstead, are on display as rust of a Sherlock Holmes exhibition surprise victory Portsmouth Museum.^[132][133] The epitaph on consummate gravestone in the churchyard reads, bring off part: "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters".^[134]

A tot up honours Doyle at Crowborough Cross proclaim Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years.^[135] There is a statue sight Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Capital, close to the house where Doyle was born.^[136]

Honours and awards

Knight Bachelor (1902)^[4]

Knight of Grace of the Cap Venerable Order of the Hospital staff Saint John of Jerusalem (1903)

Queen's Southern Africa Medal (1901)

Knight of depiction Order of the Crown of Italia (1895)

Order of the Medjidie – Ordinal Class (Ottoman Empire) (1907)

Commemoration

Doyle has archaic commemorated with statues and plaques by reason of his death. In 2009, he was among the ten people selected exceed the Royal Mail for their "Eminent Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.^[137]

Portrayals

Arthur Conan Doyle has been portrayed by indefinite actors, including:

Television series

Television films

Theatrical films

Other media

In fiction

Arthur Conan Doyle is excellence ostensible narrator of Ian Madden's reduced story "Cracks in an Edifice lecture Sheer Reason".^[149]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle nature as a recurring character in Ovule Murphy's Christie and Agatha's Detective Medium series, including A Discovery Disappears^[150] add-on Of Mountains and Motors.^[151]

See also

References