柯南道尔19世紀英國，醫生的待遇很差，柯南道爾在索思西開的診所門可羅雀，收入僅能維 持生活。於是，他找到了“第二職業”——寫作。應該說，柯南道爾的老師愛丁堡大學 醫院大夫約瑟夫.貝爾博士對他從事偵探小說有很大的影響。
貝爾博士外貌高瘦，皮膚黝黑，有一對銳利無比的灰色眼睛，一個鷹勾鼻子，他衹 要把對方看上幾眼，就能判斷其職業與愛好。有一次他對柯南道爾說：“那個病人穿了 一條右膝磨損的燈心絨褲子，他是一個鞋匠，而且是左撇子；衹有左撇子鞋匠的褲子， 纔會在褲子那個地方磨損得那沒厲害。”事實證明這是正確的。這種推理方法，使柯南 道爾做了不少有關貝爾教授判斷人的筆記，也為他以後塑造福爾摩斯這樣一個傢喻戶曉 的文學典型提供了具體的形象。
柯南道爾在29歲時寫出第一部偵探小說《血字的研究》，第一次把歇洛剋.福爾摩 斯與華生醫生介紹給讀者.這部中篇小說投寄給《康希爾》雜志，但得到的答復是： “作為短篇故事太長，但作為一本書又太短”。柯南道爾又連續給幾傢出版社投稿，均 被退了回來。最後總算有傢沃德·洛剋出版公司接納，答應第二年出版，並付給柯南道 爾25英鎊稿酬。
《血字的研究》問世後，《利平科特》雜志的編輯開始嚮柯南道爾約稿。兩年之後， 柯南道爾出版了《四簽名》。這部小說一跑打響，嚮柯南道爾約稿者紛至沓來。1891年 柯南道爾在34歲時棄醫從文，正式當上專業作傢。
從1891年至1894年的三年中，柯南道爾先後寫出了《波希米亞醜聞》、《紅發會》、 《身份案》、《博斯科姆伯溪𠔌的秘密》、《五個桔核》、《歪嘴男人》、《銀色馬》 等24個短篇，並結集出版；稿酬從每篇幅50英鎊提高到每一本集子（12個短篇）1000英 鎊。刊登柯南道爾偵探小說的《海濱》雜志也在讀者中大出風頭。福爾摩斯名聲大震， 在英國讀者中成了婦孺皆知的英雄人物。
到了1894年底，柯南道爾再也不為經濟發愁，他决定讓福爾摩斯在一次搏鬥中墜入 激流死去，讓華生醫生來結束《最後一案》這個故事。對於福爾摩斯之死。引起了廣大 讀者強烈的不滿，有人甚至表示憤怒，繼而對柯南道爾進行威脅與謾駡。廣大公衆不希 望自己心目中的英雄死去，這簡直成了文學史上的一個奇跡。
柯南道爾為此既震驚又興奮，他意識到文學藝術原來具有如此大的震撼力，偵探小 說已經被廣大讀者所接受。這樣，柯南道爾在1901年又寫出《巴斯剋維爾的獵犬》。這 部以福爾摩斯早期生活為題材的偵探小說，再次顯示了柯南道爾精嫻高超的文學藝術水 平，並再次獲得巨大成功。出版商紛紛起來約稿，使柯南道爾擱筆不寫偵探小說的决定 産生了動搖。1903年柯南道爾寫出了《空屋》，讓福爾摩斯死而復活，再次活躍在讀者 面前。並先後寫出了《歸來記》、《恐怖𠔌》、《最後致意》、《新探案》等偵探故事。
1928年至1929年，柯南道爾創作的有關福爾摩斯故事分短篇與長篇兩捲在英國出版， 書名為《福爾摩斯探案全集》。這套書成為現代偵探小說經典之作。
1930年7月7日，73歲的柯南道爾與世長辭，但他筆下的福爾摩斯卻永遠活在讀者的 心中。數以萬計的讀者到英國倫敦貝剋街去尋訪文學中的福爾摩斯，世界各國爭相出版 《福爾摩斯探案全集》，總印數達500萬册，許多喜愛文學或愛看書的讀者，談起福爾 摩斯，就像談論自己的老朋友。福爾摩斯還從書中走上影視舞臺，有關福爾摩斯的神奇 故事影響了一代又一代人，至今依舊膾炙人口。
由於讀者對福爾摩斯的青睞，柯南道爾的稿酬曾達到當時文學稿酬的最高水平。美 國一傢出版社願以5000美元買下僅10萬字的《巴斯剋維爾的獵犬》，每1000字值50美元。 英國一傢雜志則以1000字付給100英鎊來收買柯南道爾小說的版權。這在當時英國的出 版界來說，偵探小說確實達到風靡世界的地步。柯南道爾不僅生前成了公衆關心的名人， 死後也沒有被人們忘記。美國人約翰·迪剋森·卡爾專門寫了一部《阿瑟.柯南道爾爵 士》，記錄了柯南道爾從事文學藝術的有關記載。此書在世界各國一發行，大大提高柯 南道爾的知名度。
Early life
Arthur Conan Doyle was born one of 10 siblings on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was of Irish descent, and his mother, née Mary Foley, was Irish. They were married in 1855.
Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound surname (if that is how he meant it to be understood) is uncertain. The entry in which his baptism is recorded in the register of St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh gives 'Arthur Ignatius Conan' as his Christian name, and simply 'Doyle' as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.
Conan Doyle was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst, at the age of nine. He then went on to Stonyhurst College, but by the time he left the school in 1875 he had rejected Christianity to become an agnostic.
From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, including a period working in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham) and in Sheffield. While studying, Conan Doyle also began writing short stories; his first published story appeared in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20. Following his term at university, he was employed as a ship's doctor on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his doctorate on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885.
Employment and the origins of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes (right) and Dr Watson, by Sidney Paget.
In 1882 he joined former classmate George Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Conan Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than £10 to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful; while waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories. His first significant work, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887. It featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor Joseph Bell. Conan Doyle wrote to him, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes.... [R]ound the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man." Future short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the English Strand Magazine. Interestingly enough, Robert Louis Stevenson was able, even in faraway Samoa, to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "[M]y compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes.... [C]an this be my old friend Joe Bell?" Other authors sometimes suggest additional influences — for instance, the famous Edgar Allan Poe character C. Auguste Dupin.
Portrait of Doyle by Herbert Rose Barraud, 1893
While living in Southsea, he played football as a goalkeeper for an amateur side, Portsmouth Association Football Club, under the pseudonym A. C. Smith. (This club, disbanded in 1894, had no connection with the present-day Portsmouth F.C., which was founded in 1898.) Conan Doyle was also a keen cricketer, and between 1899 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). His highest score, in 1902 against London County, was 43. He was an occasional bowler who took just one first-class wicket (although one of high pedigree — it was W. G. Grace). Also a keen golfer, Conan Doyle was elected captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club, East Sussex for 1910.
Marriages and family
Portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle by Sidney Paget, 1897
In 1885 Conan Doyle married Louisa (or Louise) Hawkins, known as "Touie". She suffered from tuberculosis and died on 4 July 1906. The next year he married Jean Elizabeth Leckie, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897. He had maintained a platonic relationship with Jean while his Louisa was still alive, out of loyalty to her. Jean died in London on 27 June 1940.
Conan Doyle fathered five children. He had two with his first wife—Mary Louise (28 January 1889 – 12 June 1976) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley, known as Kingsley (15 November 1892 – 28 October 1918)—and three with his second wife—Denis Percy Stewart (17 March 1909 – 9 March 1955), second husband in 1936 of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani (circa 1910 – 19 February 1987; former sister-in-law of Barbara Hutton); Adrian Malcolm (1910–1970) and Jean Lena Annette (1912–1997).
Death of Sherlock Holmes
In 1890 Conan Doyle studied the eye in Vienna, and moved to London in 1891 to set up a practice as an ophthalmologist. He wrote in his autobiography that not a single patient crossed his door. This gave him more time for writing, and in November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You may do what you deem fit, but the crowds will not take this lightheartedly." He did so in December 1893 in order to dedicate more of his time to more "important" works — his historical novels.
Holmes and Moriarty fighting over the Reichenbach Falls. Art by Sidney Paget.
Holmes and Professor Moriarty apparently plunged to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led Conan Doyle to bring the character back. In "The Adventure of the Empty House", it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen; but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies - especially Colonel Sebastian Moran - he had arranged to also be temporarily "dead". Holmes ultimately was featured in a total of 56 short stories and four Conan Doyle novels, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.
Political campaigning
Arthur Conan Doyle's house in South Norwood, London
Following the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century and the condemnation from around the world over the United Kingdom's conduct, Conan Doyle wrote a short pamphlet titled The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which justified the UK's role in the Boer War and was widely translated. Doyle had served as a volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900.
Conan Doyle believed it was this pamphlet that resulted in his being knighted in 1902 and appointed Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. Also in 1900 he wrote the longer book, The Great Boer War. During the early years of the 20th century, Sir Arthur twice ran for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist - once in Edinburgh and once in the Hawick Burghs - but although he received a respectable vote, he was not elected.
Conan Doyle was involved in the campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State, led by journalist E. D. Morel and diplomat Roger Casement. During 1909 he wrote The Crime of the Congo, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors in that country. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, and it is possible that, together with Bertram Fletcher Robinson, they inspired several characters in the 1912 novel The Lost World.
He broke with both when Morel became one of the leaders of the pacifist movement during the First World War, and when Casement was convicted of treason against the UK during the Easter Rising. Conan Doyle tried unsuccessfully to save Casement from the death penalty, arguing that he had been driven mad and was not responsible for his actions.
Correcting miscarriages of justice
Conan Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.
It was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907, so not only did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice. The story of Conan Doyle and Edalji was fictionalized in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur & George. In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche "The West End Horror" (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsee Indian character wronged by the English justice system. Edalji himself was a Parsee.
The second case - that of Oscar Slater, a German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908 - excited Conan Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense that Slater had been framed.
Spiritualism
Following the death of his wife Louisa in 1906, the death of his son Kingsley just before the end of World War I, and the deaths of his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law (one of whom was E. W. Hornung, creator of the literary character Raffles) and his two nephews shortly after the war, Conan Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting spiritualism and its attempts to find proof of existence beyond the grave. In particular, according to some, he favoured Christian Spiritualism and encouraged the Spiritualists' National Union to accept an eighth precept - that of following the teachings and example of Jesus of Nazareth. He also was a member of the renowned paranormal organisation The Ghost Club. Its focus, then and now, is on the scientific study of alleged paranormal activities in order to prove (or refute) the existence of paranormal phenomena.
Kingsley Doyle died from pneumonia on 28 October 1918, which he contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded during the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Brigadier-General Innes Doyle also died from pneumonia in February 1919. Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a Professor Challenger novel on the subject, The Land of Mist.
Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies, taken by Elsie Wright in July 1917. One of the five photographs.
His book The Coming of the Fairies (1921) shows he was apparently convinced of the veracity of the five Cottingley Fairies photographs (which decades later were exposed as a hoax). He reproduced them in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits. In The History of Spiritualism (1926), Conan Doyle praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina "Margery" Crandon. His work on this topic was one of the reasons that one of his short-story collections, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, was banned in the Soviet Union in 1929 for supposed occultism. This ban was later lifted.[when?] Russian actor Vasily Livanov later received an Order of the British Empire for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.
Conan Doyle was friends for a time with Harry Houdini, the American magician who himself became a prominent opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920s following the death of his beloved mother. Although Houdini insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery (and consistently attempted to expose them as frauds), Conan Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers - a view expressed in Conan Doyle's The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini was apparently unable to convince Conan Doyle that his feats were simply illusions, leading to a bitter public falling out between the two.
Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Conan Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Conan Doyle had a motive - namely revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics - and that The Lost World contains several encrypted clues regarding his involvement in the hoax.
Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how, throughout his writings, Conan Doyle left open clues that related to hidden and suppressed aspects of his mentality.
Death
Grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at Minstead, England
Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at age 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful." The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire, reads:
STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS
Undershaw, the home near Hindhead, south of London that Conan Doyle had built and lived in for at least a decade, was a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004. It was then bought by a developer, and has since been empty while conservationists and Conan Doyle fans fight to preserve it.
A statue honours Conan Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where Conan Doyle lived for 23 years. There is also a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, close to the house where Conan Doyle was born.