Who Was Arthur Conan Doyle? The Doctor Behind Sherlock Holmes Who Believed in Fairies

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish-born doctor and writer best known for creating Sherlock Holmes, but his life was far stranger than any single character. He sailed to the Arctic on a whaling ship, served as a volunteer doctor in a war, was knighted, used Holmes-style detective work to free two wrongly convicted men, and, in his later years, became a passionate believer in communication with the dead, even defending photographs of fairies that turned out to be fakes. The creator of fiction's most logical mind was, in other ways, a man of deep faith in the unseen.

A medical student from Edinburgh

Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 1881. One of his teachers there was the surgeon Joseph Bell, famous for deducing a patient's job and history from small details, and Doyle later said Bell was a model for Holmes.

While still a student, he worked as a ship's surgeon on a whaler that sailed to the Arctic waters around Greenland, an adventure that gave him a taste for the dramatic.

A quiet practice, a busy pen

After qualifying, Doyle set up a medical practice in Southsea, near Portsmouth. It was not very successful, and he filled the empty hours by writing. In 1887 Sherlock Holmes appeared for the first time, in A Study in Scarlet.

The character he tried to kill

Holmes became enormously popular, but Doyle wanted to be remembered for what he considered more serious work, especially historical novels like The White Company. In 1893 he killed Holmes off. Public pressure eventually brought the detective back, first in The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialised from 1901).

He also created another memorable hero: the explosive Professor Challenger of The Lost World (1912), a novel about an expedition that finds dinosaurs surviving on a remote plateau in South America. Its title has been borrowed by countless later adventure stories.

War, politics and a knighthood

During the Second Boer War in South Africa, Doyle served as a volunteer doctor in a field hospital, and he wrote in defence of Britain's conduct of the war. He was knighted in 1902. He also stood twice for Parliament, unsuccessfully.

Real detective work

Doyle did not just write about solving cases; he solved some himself. He took up the case of George Edalji, a solicitor of Indian descent convicted of maiming animals, and of Oscar Slater, convicted of murder. Doyle investigated both, and both men were eventually cleared. In the Edalji case, Doyle pointed out, among other things, that Edalji's very poor eyesight made the crime nearly impossible for him to commit at night, a deduction worthy of Holmes.

Spirits and fairies

Doyle had long been interested in psychic phenomena, and after the First World War, in which many of his relatives died, including his son Kingsley, he became a committed spiritualist, believing that the living could communicate with the dead. He travelled and lectured widely on the subject.

His most famous misjudgement involved the Cottingley Fairies, a series of photographs taken by two young cousins in Yorkshire that appeared to show them with fairies. Doyle supported their authenticity in print. Decades later, the cousins admitted that the fairies were paper cut-outs.

He also became friends with the magician Harry Houdini, a determined debunker of fake mediums. Their disagreement over spiritualism led to a public falling-out.

Death and legacy

Doyle died of a heart attack at his home in Crowborough, Sussex, on 7 July 1930. His most famous creation has long outlived him; Holmes is still adapted for film, television and stage. The contradiction at the heart of his life, a champion of evidence in fiction and of faith in spirits in life, makes him one of the most human of great authors.

Learn with Conan Doyle: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to be taken in	to be fooled	Many people were taken in by the photos.
seeing is believing	you believe something when you see it	Seeing is believing, but photos can lie.
to clear someone's name	to prove someone innocent	He worked hard to clear Edalji's name.
to have a falling-out	to argue and end a friendship	They had a falling-out over spiritualism.
a far cry from	very different from	His later beliefs were a far cry from Holmes's logic.

Try this: Think of a time you were "taken in" by something online. Write three English sentences about it, using "seeing is believing" and "a far cry from".