Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for being the author of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle’s birthday, May 22, is celebrated as Sherlock Holmes Day for fans of one of the most famous literary detectives of all time.
Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1859. While he wrote some short stories as a young adult, Doyle did not originally pursue a career as an author. He went to medical school and graduated with his bachelor’s in 1881 and earned his M.D. in 1885. One of Doyle’s professors, Dr. Joseph Bell, was a master of diagnostics and deduction. His observational prowess would provide inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes.
“A Study in Scarlet”, the first Sherlock Holmes story, was published in 1887. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were immediately popular with readers, but Doyle wasn’t passionate about the characters. He considered the Sherlock Holmes stories to have more popular “commercial” value compared to his other writing. He wanted to be regarded as a more “serious” author for the other novels, plays and poems he wrote.
Doyle continued to practice
medicine, got married and had a family, all while pursuing a literary career.
While he explored writing nonfiction and penned many pieces on spiritualism, it
was Sherlock Holmes who would reign supreme. The last of Sherlock Holmes’s
stories were published in 1927, and Doyle passed away in 1930.
