Of course, when the name Arthur Conan Doyle sounds, most immediately recall the image of the famous Sherlock Holmes, which was created by one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, few know that between the author and the hero there was a whole confrontation, fierce competition, during which a brilliant detective was mercilessly destroyed several times by the pen. Also, many readers are not aware of how diverse and full of adventures Doyle's life was, how much he did for literature and society as a whole. The unusual life of a writer named Arthur Conan Doyle, interesting biography facts, dates, etc. are presented in this article.
The childhood of the future writer
Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859 in the artist's family. Place of birth - Edinburgh, Scotland. Despite the fact that the Doyle family was in poverty because of the chronic alcoholism of the head of the family, the boy grew up smart and educated. The love of books was instilled from early childhood, when Arthur Mary's mother spent many hours telling her child various stories drawn from literature. A variety of interests since childhood, a lot of books read and erudition determined the further path that Arthur Conan Doyle took. A brief biography of the outstanding author is presented below.
Education and career choice
The education of the future writer was paid by wealthy relatives. He studied first at the Jesuit school, then was transferred to Stonyhurst, where the training was quite serious and famous for its fundamental nature. At the same time, the high quality of education did not compensate for the severity of being in this place - the institution actively practiced cruel corporal punishment to which all children indiscriminately suffered.
Despite the difficult living conditions, the boarding school became exactly the place where Arthur realized his craving for the creation of literary works and the ability to do this. At that time it was too early to talk about talent, but even then the future writer was gathering around himself peer companies, eager for a new story from a talented classmate.
By the end of college, Doyle achieved some recognition - he published a journal for students and wrote many poems, which were always highly appreciated by students and teachers. In addition to his passion for writing, Arthur successfully mastered cricket, and then, when he moved to Germany for some time, and other types of physical activity, in particular football and tobogganing.
When he had to decide what profession to get, he was confused by members of his family. Relatives expected that the boy would follow in the footsteps of his creative ancestors, but Arthur suddenly became interested in medicine and, despite the objections of his uncle and mother, he entered the University of Edinburgh at the Faculty of Medicine. It was there that he met Joseph Bell, a medical professor, who served as a prototype for creating the image of the famous Sherlock Holmes in the future. Doctors Bell was distinguished by a difficult temperament and amazing intellectual abilities, which allowed him to accurately diagnose people by their appearance.
Doyle's family was large, and in addition to Arthur, six more children were brought up in it. The father had gone crazy by that time, and there was virtually no one to earn money, since the mother was completely and completely immersed in the education of the offspring. Therefore, the future writer studied most disciplines at an accelerated rate, and devoted the released time to part-time work as an assistant to the doctor.
Reaching the age of twenty, Arthur returns to writing attempts. From his pen comes several stories, some of which are accepted into print by well-known magazines. Arthur is encouraged by the opportunity to make money through literature, and he continues to write and offer publishers the fruits of his labor, often very successfully. Arthur Conan Doyle's first published short stories were Secrets of the Sassass Valley and The American Tale.
Arthur Conan Doyle Medical Biography: Writer and Doctor
Arthur Conan Doyle's biography, family, environment, diversity and unexpected transitions from one activity to another are very exciting. So, having received in 1880 an offer to take the position of an on-board surgeon on a ship called "Hope", Arthur embarks on a journey that lasted more than 7 months. Thanks to a new and interesting experience, another story is born, called the Captain of the Polar Star.
Craving for adventure mixed with a craving for creativity and love for the profession, and after graduation, Arthur Conan Doyle gets an on-board doctor on a ship cruising between Liverpool and the West African coast. However, how attractive the seven-month trip to the Arctic turned out to be, the hot Africa became so repulsive for him. Therefore, he soon left this ship and returned to measured labor in England as a doctor.
In 1882, Arthur Conan Doyle begins his first medical practice in Portsmouth. At first, due to the small number of clients, Arthur's interests again shifted to the side of literature, and during this period such stories as “Blumensdayke Ravine” and “April Fools' Joke” were born. It was in Portsmouth that Arthur meets his first big love - Elma Welden, whom she even plans to marry, but due to lengthy scandals, the couple decides to leave. Over the following years, Arthur continues to rush between two classes - medicine and literature.
Marriage and Literary Breakthrough
The fateful request of his neighbor Pike was to see one of the patients with meningitis. He turned out to be hopeless, however, watching him served as an occasion for meeting his sister named Louise, with whom Arthur had already married in 1885.
After marrying the aspiration of a beginner, writers began to grow steadily. He became few successful publications in modern magazines, he wanted to create something big and serious that would affect the hearts of readers and enter the world of literature for centuries. Such a novel was "A Study in Scarlet", published in 1887 and first introduced to the world of Sherlock Holmes. According to Doyle himself, writing a novel turned out to be easier than getting it published. It took almost three years to search for those who wanted to release a book. The fee for the first large-scale creation was only 25 pounds.
In 1887, Arthur's rebellious disposition involved him in a new adventure - the study and practice of spiritualism. A new direction of interest inspires new stories, in particular about the famous detective.
Rivalry with a literary hero
After “Etude in crimson tones” the world saw the work entitled “The Adventures of Micah Clark”, as well as “The White Detachment”. However, Sherlock Holmes, who had fallen into the soul of both readers and publishers, asked again for the pages. An additional impetus for the continuation of the story about the detective was the acquaintance with Oscar Wilde and the editor of one of the most popular magazines, which insistently persuade Doyle to continue writing about Sherlock Holmes. So on the pages of the magazine "Lippincots Magazine" appears "Sign of the Four."
In subsequent years, throwing between professions become even more ambitious. Arthur decides to start ophthalmology and travels to Vienna for training. However, after four months of efforts, he realizes that he is not ready to learn professional German and spend time in the future on a new direction of medical practice. So he returns to England and publishes several more short stories dedicated to Sherlock Holmes.
The final choice of profession
After a serious illness with influenza, as a result of which Doyle almost died, he decides to stop medical practice forever and devote all his time to literature, especially since the popularity of his stories and novels at that time reached its peak. So the medical biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, whose books became increasingly known, came to an end.
The Strand publishing house asks to write a series of stories about Holmes, however, Doyle, feeling tired and annoyed by the annoying hero, asks for a fee of 50 pounds in the sincere hope that the publishing house will reject such conditions of cooperation. However, Strand signs a contract for the appropriate amount and receives its six stories. Readers are thrilled.
Arthur Conan Doyle sold the next six stories to the publisher for £ 1, 000. Tired of "buying" high fees and being offended by Holmes for not showing his more significant creations behind his back, Doyle decides to "kill" a detective loved by everyone. Along with working for Strand, Doyle writes for the theater, and this experience inspires him much more. However, the "death" of Holmes did not bring him the expected satisfaction. Further attempts to create a worthy play were defeated, and Arthur seriously thought about the question, can he even create something good, except for the Holmes story?
At the same time, Arthur Conan Doyle was fond of lectures on literature, which are very popular.
The wife of Arthur Louise was sick a lot, in connection with this, traveling with lectures had to be stopped. In search of a more favorable climate for her, they found themselves in Egypt, whose stay was remembered as a carefree cricket game, walks in Cairo and the injury sustained by Arthur as a result of a fall from a horse.
The Resurrection of Holmes, or the Deal of Conscience
Upon returning from England, the Doyle family is faced with material problems caused by a fulfilled dream - the construction of their own home. To get out of a financially difficult situation, Arthur Conan Doyle decides to make a deal with his own conscience and resurrects Sherlock Holmes in the pages of a new play that is enthusiastically received by the public. Then, in many of Doyle's new works, the presence of the detective whom he dislikes is almost invisibly noticeable, and the writer nevertheless had to put up with the right to exist.
Late love
Arthur Conan Doyle was considered a highly moral person with strong principles, and there is much evidence that he never cheated on his wife. However, he could not avoid the vicious love of another girl - Gene Lekki. At the same time, despite a strong romantic affection for her, they got married only ten years after meeting, when his wife died of the disease.
Gene inspired him to new hobbies - hunting and music lessons, and also influenced the further literary activities of the writer, whose plots became less sharp, but more sensual and deep.
War, politics, social activity
Doyle's further life was marked by participation in the Boer War, where he went to study the war in real life, but was an ordinary field doctor who saved the lives of soldiers not from fatal battle wounds, but from typhus and fever raging then.
The writer's literary activity marked himself with the release of a new novel about Sherlock Holmes "The Hound of the Baskervilles", for which he was awarded a new wave of reader love, as well as accusations of stealing the idea from his friend Fletcher Robinson. However, they were not confirmed by weighty evidence.
In 1902, Doyle received a knighthood, according to some sources - for his merits in the Boer War, according to others - for literary achievements. At the same time, Arthur Conan Doyle made attempts to realize himself in politics, which are suppressed by rumors of his religious fanaticism.
An important area of Doyle's social activity was participation in trials and post-trial trials as a defender of the accused. Based on the experience gained while writing stories about Sherlock Holmes, he managed to prove the innocence of several people, which made a significant contribution to the popularity of his name.
The active political and social position of Arthur Conan Doyle was expressed in the fact that he had predicted many steps of the greatest powers in the framework of the First World War. Despite the fact that his opinion was perceived by many as the fruit of a writer's fantasy, most of the assumptions were justified. It is also a historically recognized fact that it was Doyle who initiated the construction of the Channel Tunnel.
