The life of Conan Doyle – the creator of the renowned detective Sherlock Holmes – bears many similarities to his fictional character, a fact not widely known among readers.
Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective of all time. The brilliant detective first appeared in the classic detective work Sherlock Holmes by author Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887.
Over 100 years since his creation, Sherlock Holmes, with his deerstalker hat and the smoke curling from his pipe, has become an immortal symbol of a brilliant detective, renowned in detective fiction, and is considered the finest character ever created in this genre.
The Guinness World Records has noted Holmes as the most portrayed character in film history, with 70 different actors appearing in over 200 movies.
The Difficult Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Portrait of the writer Conan Doyle – Creator of the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series.
Born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland (now part of the United Kingdom), Conan Doyle faced a challenging childhood.
His father was an alcoholic, and it was thanks to his mother’s efforts that Conan Doyle received a good education. She was a source of both material and emotional support until he married and pursued a writing career.
Studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh from 1876 to 1881, after graduation, Conan Doyle became a doctor on a ship bound for West Africa. A year later, he opened a private practice in Plymouth. During the downtime while waiting for patients, he began writing stories.
In 1890, Conan Doyle moved to London to open an ophthalmology practice. At this time, Doyle decided to write short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes as the main character.
Doyle believed that Holmes and his cases suited the short story format. As Doyle predicted, the short stories about Holmes created a sensation among readers who loved detective fiction, particularly among the middle class.
In 1887, A Study in Scarlet, the first story about Sherlock Holmes by Conan Doyle, was published and received widespread acclaim. However, the success of the book did little to help Conan Doyle’s financial struggles. In fact, he began to regret creating Holmes, as the detective’s cases overshadowed what he considered to be his serious works, such as the historical novel Micah Clarke.
Sherlock Holmes and His Complex Relationship
In the stories, Sherlock Holmes was born in 1854. He began living at 221B Baker Street, London, England, with Dr. Watson, his close friend and biographer during and after the cases.
Doyle’s feelings for Holmes were quite complex. He both loved and hated his “intellectual child” that made him one of the greatest writers in history.
For two years, Doyle devoted himself entirely to the brilliant detective character. However, as Holmes gained popularity, the pressure on Doyle grew. Deadlines imposed by magazines became an increasing burden on the author. Ultimately, Doyle decided to “end” Sherlock Holmes’s life.
In the short story The Final Problem, Conan Doyle had Holmes carelessly approach the edge of a cliff and fall over the Reichenbach Falls. The author’s decision met with fierce backlash from readers. Yet Doyle remained resolute: “I will be heavily criticized if I take action against this gentleman. But it is not murder; it is an act of self-defense. If I do not kill him, he will eventually kill me.”
With Sherlock Holmes, fans began to infuse their personal thoughts into popular culture.
At the time of Holmes’s demise, Conan Doyle may have thought that it was enough. If he truly believed that, he misunderstood his fans’ emotions. The public’s reaction to Holmes’s death was unprecedented in the literary world.
Over 20,000 readers of The Strand Magazine canceled their long-term subscriptions in outrage over Holmes’s untimely departure. The magazine could not survive the backlash. The newspaper staff referred to Holmes’s death as a “terrible event.”
For Sherlock Holmes, fans began to involve their personal thoughts into popular culture. They wanted the works they loved to meet their specific expectations. They genuinely seemed to desire an interactive relationship with the works they adored.
However, it took eight years, until 1901, before public pressure became so great that Conan Doyle had to write a new story about Holmes before his death, titled The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Doyle explained that this story took place before Holmes faced his fateful day. The following year, the author continued with The Adventure of the Empty House, in which Conan Doyle explained that only Moriarty fell from the cliff while Holmes merely faked his death to continue investigating Moriarty’s organization.
Today, many must acknowledge that Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective in the history of literature and one of the most recognized literary characters worldwide. The “father” of Sherlock Holmes throwing him off the cliff did not kill Holmes. Holmes will always return, in this life and the next. Fans will always look forward to that.
Famous Quotes from Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is the most famous fictional detective of all time.
1. My name is Sherlock Holmes. My business is to know what other people do not know.
2. The mind of man is like a room that is initially empty; you will have to put in it whatever furniture you like. A fool piles into it all sorts of rubbish, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him is overwhelmed by a mass of other knowledge, so that when he needs it, he is unable to find it.
In contrast, the skilled craftsman is very selective about what he puts into that room. He wants only to store tools that are useful to him in his work; each is arranged in perfect order.
It is a mistake to think that this little room has walls that can expand and that it can swell to infinity. You (he is speaking to Dr. Watson) must believe that there will come a time when every time we acquire new knowledge, we will forget something that was already in our heads.
Therefore, do not take in useless concepts; they will push out those that are useful.
3. A fundamental mistake is to start with assumptions when we do not have the actual facts in hand. Doing so makes our conclusions very likely to be skewed.
4. Our thoughts must be as great as nature when we want to understand nature.
5. For a great mind, nothing is small.
6. The issue is not what you have done in this world, but the question is, what can you do to make people believe that you have done it?
7. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
8. From a single drop of water, a skilled reasoner can deduce the potential of an ocean or a waterfall, even if he has never seen them.
Thus, all of life is a vast chain of links, and we can know its nature if we know one link.
Like all other sciences, “deduction and analysis” is a science that we can only master after a long and persistent process of study.
A novice in this field should start with elementary problems: whenever meeting anyone, just through observation, let us try to learn about that person’s background and profession.
Though it may seem trivial, this exercise hones our observational skills and teaches us where to look and what to seek.
Nails, calluses on the index and thumb, shirt sleeves, knee pants, gait, and posture all reveal a person’s profession…
9. People, when presented with a series of events, will mostly predict the outcome of those events.
They can gather those facts in their minds and then deduce what is likely to happen. But few people, after hearing it to the end, can deduce which events led to that outcome.
