Extra Stuff

Sir Arthur Ignatius Doyle

Sir Arthur Ignatius Doyle was born May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland, to a father of Irish descent, Charles Altamont Doyle, and Irish mother, nee Mary Foley. He was educated at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh where he received his medical degree in 1881. In 1882, Doyle joined a former classmate, George Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved to be difficult, and Doyle soon left to set up his own practice. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that same year with less than 10 Euro to his name, he set his practice in at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice had little to no clientele; while waiting for patients, Conan Doyle began writing stories. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modeled after his former university professor Joseph Bell, to whom Conan Doyle wrote “It is most certainly to you that I Sherlock Holmes…round 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. Robert Louis Stevenson was able,even in faraway Samoa, to recognize the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: “My compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes…can this be my old friend Joe Bell?” Other authors sometimes additional influences—for instance, the famous Edgar Allen Poe character, C. Auguste Dupin.

Doyle was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction. His historical romances, includes Micah Clarke (1889) and The White Company (1891). His play A Story of Waterloo (1894) was one of Sir Henry Irving’s, a popular Victorian Era actor, notable successes. Doyle also wrote two political pamphlets; one being The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which justified Great Britain’s actions in the South Africa war. Doyle believed that such literary contributes got him Knighted in 1902. In 1885, he married Louisa Hawkins, known as “Touie”, who suffered from tuberculosis and died on July 4, 1906. Doyle then married Jean Elizabeth Leckie in 1907, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897. He had maintained a platonic relationship with her while his first wife Louisa was still alive, out of loyalty to her. Jean dies in London on June 27, 1940. Doyle had five children, two with his first wife Mary Louise and Arthur Alleyene Kingsley, known as Kingsley, and three with his second wife, Denis Percy Stewart, Adrian Malcolm and Jean Lena Annette. In his later years, Doyle became an ardent spiritualist and wrote a History of Spiritualism (1926) and The Land of Mist. He became so involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a book entitled The Coming of the Fairies (1921) which showed he was apparently convinced of the veracity of the Cottingley Fairies photographs that proved to be a hoax decades later. Doyole would die of heart attack at age 71 on July 7, 1930.

The Biter Bit- In Class Discussion

A Biter Bit: someone who has caused harm to other people in the past and has now been hurt

As a class, we decided to compare and contrast Poe's character, Dupin, to Collins' character, Sharpin.