Portal:Arthur Conan Doyle
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
|
Introduction
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer best known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Holmes. Originally a physician, in 1887 he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels about Holmes and Dr. Watson. In addition, Doyle wrote over fifty short stories featuring the famous detective. The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction.
Doyle was a prolific writer; his non-Sherlockian works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
Selected general articles
The Firm of Girdlestone is a novel by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in 1890 by Chatto and Windus in London, England. In 1915 a silent film adaptation The Firm of Girdlestone was made. Read more...
A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Written in 1886, the story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in popular fiction. The book's title derives from a speech given by Holmes, a consulting detective, to his friend and chronicler Watson on the nature of his work, in which he describes the story's murder investigation as his "study in scarlet": "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it."
The story, and its main characters, attracted little public interest when it first appeared. Only 11 complete copies of the magazine in which the story first appeared, Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, are known to exist now and they have considerable value. Although Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories featuring Holmes, A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon. The novel was followed by The Sign of the Four, published in 1890. A Study in Scarlet was the first work of detective fiction to incorporate the magnifying glass as an investigative tool. Read more...- The Mystery of Cloomber is a novel by the British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is narrated by John Fothergill West, a Scot who has moved with his family from Edinburgh to Wigtownshire to care for the estate of his father's half brother, William Farintosh. It was first published in 1888 in the Pall Mall Gazette. Read more...
- "The Brown Hand," a well-noted short-story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was first published in The Strand Magazine, May 1899. Read more...
Illustration by William Thomas Smedley for the original publication of "Lot No. 249"
"Lot No. 249" is a Gothic horror short story written by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in 1892. The story tells of a University of Oxford named Abercrombie Smith who notices a strange series of events surrounding Edward Bellingham, an Egyptology student who owns many ancient Egyptian artifacts, including a mummy. After seeing his mummy disappear and reappear, and two instances of Belligham's enemies getting attacked, Smith concludes that Bellingham is reanimating his mummy. Smith confronts Bellingham, who denies this is the case; the next day, Smith is attacked by the mummy and escapes. Smith then forces Bellingham to destroy his mummy and the associated artifacts at gunpoint.
Written during a period of great European interest in Egyptian culture known as Egyptomania, Doyle was inspired to write "Lot No. 249" by his interests in the supernatural, crime and Egyptology. Though reanimated mummies had previously appeared in English literature, Doyle's story was he first to portray one as dangerous. The story was first published in Harper's Magazine has since been widely anthologized. "Lot No. 249" has received positive reviews from critics, including praise from authors H. P. Lovecraft and Anne Rice. Critics have compared the story to the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and H. Rider Haggard, and interpreted it as containing themes of imperialism and masculinity. "Lot No. 249" has been adapted for film and television, and has significantly influenced subsequent media that depicts mummies, as well as other works of horror fiction. Read more...
One of the coversheets to the original serial publication of the novel in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine
The Sign of the Four (1890), also called The Sign of Four, is the second novel featuring Sherlock Holmes written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring the fictional detective. Read more...- Danger! And Other Stories (1918) is a collection of short stories published by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Read more...
- The Case of Lady Sannox (also published as "The Kiss of Blood") is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle published in The Idler in November 1893. Read more...
- The Stark Munro Letters is a novel by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first published in 1895 by Longmans, Green & Co. in London, England. Read more...
- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is the final set of twelve (out of a total of fifty-six) Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in the Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927. Read more...
- In 1903, the place was the scene of the "Great Wyrley Outrages", a series of slashings of horses, cows and sheep. In October, a local solicitor and son of the parson, George Edalji, was tried and convicted for the eighth attack, on a pit pony, and sentenced to seven years with hard labour. Edalji’s family had been the victims of a long-running campaign of untraceable abusive letters and anonymous harassment in 1888 and 1892-5. Further letters, in 1903, alleged he was partially responsible for the outrages and caused the police suspicion to focus on him.
Edalji was released in 1906 after the Chief Justice in Bahamas and others had pleaded his case. But he was not pardoned, and the police kept him under surveillance. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame was persuaded to "turn detective" to prove the man's innocence. This he achieved after eight months of work. Edalji was exonerated by a Home Office committee of enquiry, although no compensation was awarded. Read more...
The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is loosely based on the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915. The first book edition was copyrighted in 1914, and it was first published by George H. Doran Company in New York on 27 February 1915, and illustrated by Arthur I. Keller. Read more...
Illustration by William Small from the first publication of the story in The Cornhill Magazine, January 1884.
"J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" is an 1884 short story by young Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is in the form of a first-person testimony by a survivor of the Marie Celeste, a fictionalised version of the Mary Celeste, a ship found mysteriously abandoned and adrift in the Atlantic Ocean in 1872. Conan Doyle's story was published anonymously in the January 1884 issue of the respected Cornhill Magazine. Read more...
The Poison Belt was the second story, a novella, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Professor Challenger. Written in 1913, much of it takes place in a single room in Challenger's house in Sussex. This would be the last story written about Challenger until the 1920s, by which time Doyle's spiritualist beliefs had begun to influence his writing. Read more...- The Maracot Deep is a short 1929 novel by Arthur Conan Doyle about the discovery of a sunken city of Atlantis by a team of explorers led by Professor Maracot. He is accompanied by Cyrus Headley, a young research zoologist and Bill Scanlan, an expert mechanic working with an iron works in Philadelphia who is in charge of the construction of the submersible which the team takes to the bottom of the Atlantic.
The novel first appeared in 1928 as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post. It also appeared as a serial in The Strand Magazine from October 1927 to February 1928. In 1929 it was followed by a sequel, The Lord of the Dark Face, beginning with the April issue of The Strand. The same year the novel was published in The Maracot Deep and Other Stories from John Murray in London, and was released in the U.S. by Doubleday Books of New York. Read more...
The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals (dinosaurs and other extinct creatures) still survive. It was originally published serially in the popular Strand Magazine and illustrated by New-Zealand-born artist Harry Rountree during the months of April–November 1912. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war between indigenous people and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures. Read more...
Richard "Dickie" Doyle (18 September 1824 – 10 December 1883) was a notable illustrator of the Victorian era. His work frequently appeared, amongst other places, in Punch magazine; he drew the cover of the first issue, and designed the magazine's masthead, a design that was used for over a century. Read more...
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1893, by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Doyle had decided that these would be the last collection of Holmes's stories, and intended to kill him off in "The Final Problem". Reader demand stimulated him to write another Holmes adventure—The Hound of the Baskervilles. In "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", Holmes relates the aftermath of "The Final Problem", and how he survived. Read more...
John Doyle (Dublin 1797 – 2 January 1868 London), known by the pen name H. B., was a political cartoonist, caricaturist, painter and lithographer.
He was the eldest son of a Dublin silk mercer, and came from a Roman Catholic family which in the 17th century had been granted extensive estates, possibly in County Offaly or County Laois, and their own coat of arms, but had suffered for their religion and since been dispossessed. In his youth he learned to paint landscapes under Gaspare Gabrielli, and miniature portraits at the Royal Dublin Society's drawing school under John Comerfield. He won a gold medal in 1805. He was commissioned to paint equestrian portraits of the Marquess of Sligo and Lord Talbot, the Irish viceroy, and in 1822 he produced six prints entitled The Life of a Racehorse. That year he moved to London with his wife, Marianna Conan. His painting Turning out the Stag brought him recognition when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1825. Read more...- The White Company is a historical adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle set during the Hundred Years' War. The story is set in England, France, and Spain, in the years 1366 and 1367, against the background of the campaign of Edward, the Black Prince to restore Peter of Castile to the throne of the Kingdom of Castile. The climax of the book occurs before the Battle of Nájera. Doyle became inspired to write the novel after attending a lecture on the Middle Ages in 1889. After extensive research, The White Company was published in serialized form in 1891 in Cornhill Magazine. Additionally, the book is considered a companion to Doyle's later work Sir Nigel, which explores the early campaigns of Sir Nigel Loring and Samkin Aylward.
The novel is relatively unknown today, though it was very popular up through the Second World War. In fact, Doyle himself regarded this and his other historical novels more highly than the Sherlock Holmes adventures for which he is mainly remembered. Read more... - "The Horror of the Heights" is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in Strand Magazine in 1913. Read more...
His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of previously published Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, including the titular short story, "His Last Bow. The War Service of Sherlock Holmes" (1917). The collection's first US edition adjusts the anthology's subtitle to Some Later Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes. All editions contain a brief preface, by "John H. Watson, M.D.", that assures readers that as of the date of publication (1917), Holmes is long retired from his profession of detective but is still alive and well, albeit suffering from a touch of rheumatism. Read more...
The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the crime novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England's West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin. Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson investigate the case. This was the first appearance of Holmes since his apparent death in "The Final Problem", and the success of The Hound of the Baskervilles led to the character's eventual revival.
In 2003, the book was listed as number 128 of 200 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel." In 1999, it was listed as the top Holmes novel, with a perfect rating from Sherlockian scholars of 100. Read more...- Brigadier Gerard is the hero of a series of 17 historical short stories, a play, and a major character in a novel by the British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The hero, Etienne Gerard, is a Hussar officer in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Gerard's most notable attribute is his vanity – he is utterly convinced that he is the bravest soldier, greatest swordsman, most accomplished horseman and most gallant lover in all France. Gerard is not entirely wrong, since he displays notable bravery on many occasions, but his self-satisfaction undercuts this quite often. Obsessed with honour and glory, he is always ready with a stirring speech or a gallant remark to a lady.
Conan Doyle, in making his hero a vain, and often rather uncomprehending, Frenchman, was able to satirise both the stereotypical English view of the French and – by presenting them from Gerard's baffled point of view – English manners and attitudes. Read more... - "The Terror of Blue John Gap" is a short story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in Strand Magazine in 1910.
The story comprises the adventures of a British doctor, recovering from tuberculosis, who goes to stay at a Derbyshire farm looking for rest and relaxation, becomes entrapped in a series of sinister events, and is forced to uncover the mysteries surrounding "Blue John Gap" and the "Terror" that lurks within it. Read more... - "The Disintegration Machine" is a short story written by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in January 1929. The story centers on the discovery of a machine capable of disintegrating objects and reforming them as they were. This short story is a part of the "Challenger series", a collection of stories about the wealthy eccentric adventurer Professor Challenger. Read more...
- The Parasite is an 1894 Novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Parasite makes use of a form of mind control similar to the mesmerism of the Victorian era; it works on some hosts but not others. Read more...
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twelve short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It was first published on 14 October 1892; the individual stories had been serialised in The Strand Magazine between July 1891 and June 1892. The stories are not in chronological order, and the only characters common to all twelve are Holmes and Dr. Watson. The stories are related in first-person narrative from Watson's point of view.
In general the stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes identify, and try to correct, social injustices. Holmes is portrayed as offering a new, fairer sense of justice. The stories were well received, and boosted the subscriptions figures of The Strand Magazine, prompting Doyle to be able to demand more money for his next set of stories. The first story, "A Scandal in Bohemia", includes the character of Irene Adler, who, despite being featured only within this one story by Doyle, is a prominent character in modern Sherlock Holmes adaptations, generally as a love interest for Holmes. Doyle included four of the twelve stories from this collection in his twelve favourite Sherlock Holmes stories, picking "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" as his overall favourite. Read more...- Sir Nigel is a historical novel set during the early phase of the Hundred Years' War, spanning the years 1350 to 1356, by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and written in 1906. It is the background story to Doyle's earlier novel The White Company, and describes the early life of that book's hero Nigel Loring, a knight in the service of King Edward III in the first phase of the Hundred Years' War.
The character is loosely based on the historical knight Neil Loring. Read more... - The Vital Message was written by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in Britain in 1919 by Hodder & Stoughton. Read more...
- Brigadier Gerard is the hero of a series of 17 historical short stories, a play, and a major character in a novel by the British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The hero, Etienne Gerard, is a Hussar officer in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Gerard's most notable attribute is his vanity – he is utterly convinced that he is the bravest soldier, greatest swordsman, most accomplished horseman and most gallant lover in all France. Gerard is not entirely wrong, since he displays notable bravery on many occasions, but his self-satisfaction undercuts this quite often. Obsessed with honour and glory, he is always ready with a stirring speech or a gallant remark to a lady.
Conan Doyle, in making his hero a vain, and often rather uncomprehending, Frenchman, was able to satirise both the stereotypical English view of the French and – by presenting them from Gerard's baffled point of view – English manners and attitudes. Read more... - The Narrative of John Smith (2011) is a novel written in 1883 by Arthur Conan Doyle, published posthumously by The British Library. In a work of narrative fiction, Doyle writes from the perspective of a middle-aged bachelor named John Smith recovering from rheumatic gout. Unlike his later work in detective fiction, fantasy, and science fiction, this novel unfolds through a series of tangential, essay-like thoughts stemming from observations on everyday life. The subjects are of a “personal-social-political complexion”. Read more...
- Charles Altamont Doyle (25 March 1832 – 10 October 1893) was an illustrator, watercolourist and civil servant. Member of an artistic family, he is remembered today primarily for being the father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. Read more...
- Micah Clarke is a historical adventure novel by British author Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1889 and set during the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 in England. The book is a bildungsroman whose protagonist, Micah Clarke, begins as a boy seeking adventure in a rather romantic and naive way, falls under the influence of an older and vastly experienced, world-weary soldier of fortune, and becomes a grown up after numerous experiences, some of them very harrowing. At the conclusion he must go into exile as a hunted outlaw, becomes a soldier of fortune himself and is launched on lifetime military career. In the process the book also records much of the history of the Monmouth Rebellion, from the point of view of someone living in 17th century England.
Much of the focus is upon the religious dimension of the conflict. The Rebellion was prompted by the desire of many to replace the Catholic King James with a Protestant rival. Micah is the son of a committed Protestant father who sends Micah to fight in the same cause which he himself had fought in during the English Civil War. Micah fights at the Battle of Sedgemoor, which in a narrative aside Doyle obliquely acknowledges to be the last clear-cut pitched battle on open ground between two military forces fought on English soil. Micah also witnesses the bloodletting and indiscriminate hangings in the aftermath, is prosecuted along with many others in the Bloody Assizes of the notorious Judge Jeffries, is condemned to be sold to slavery in Barbados and is at the last moment saved from the very hold of the slave ship. Read more... - James William Edmund Doyle (22 October 1822 – 3 December 1892) was an antiquary and illustrator. Read more...
The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903-1904, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories were published in the Strand Magazine in Great Britain, and Collier's in the United States. Read more...
Undershaw is a former residence of the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
The house was built for Doyle at his order to accommodate his wife's health requirements, and is where he lived with his family from 1897 to 1907. Read more...- "The Inner Room" is a poem by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in his 1898 poetry collection Songs of Action. Unlike most of Doyle's poetry, the poem is "a deeply personal, highly introspective effort," which has been interpreted as "describing the various battles within [Doyle's] mind."
The poem describes Doyle's "inner room"—his own brain or soul—as being inhabited by several different individuals. In Doyle's own words, these "describ[e] our multiplex personality." Discussing the poem, Doyle's biographer Daniel Stashower observes that Doyle "conceived of his own personality as a 'motley company' of conflicting impulses, each represented by a different character—a soldier, a priest, an agnostic—and all of them struggling for control of his soul." Another biographer, Martin Booth, describes this "intensely serious" poem as "fascinating, for it lays bare the powers that [Doyle] believes were in him, eternally fighting to get the upper hand on his soul." Read more...
Need help?
Do you have a question about Arthur Conan Doyle that you can't find the answer to?
Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.
Selected images
One of the five photographs of Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies, taken by Elsie Wright in July 1917
Portrait of Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget, 1904
Doyle's grave at Minstead
Doyle statue in Crowborough, East Sussex
Professor Challenger by Harry Rountree in the novella The Poison Belt published in The Strand Magazine
Doyle's house in South Norwood
Portrait of Doyle by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1893
Arthur Conan Doyle by George Wylie Hutchinson, 1894
Façade of Undershaw with Doyle's children, Mary and Kingsley, on the drive
Subcategories
- Select [►] to view subcategories
Topics
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
Wikibooks
Books
Commons
Media
Wikinews
News
Wikiquote
Quotations
Wikisource
Texts
Wikiversity
Learning resources
Wiktionary
Definitions
Wikidata
Database
- What are portals?
- List of portals


