Sir Conan Doyle is the creator of the ever famous fiction character, Sherlock Holmes. This is a mix of a few of Doyle’s biographies. Enjoy.

Arthur Ignatious Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was an alcholic and often behaved erratically. There was little spare money during Arthur’s childhood because of his father’s drinking.

Some members of the Doyle family, however, were wealthy and paid for Arthur’s studies from the age of nine. He spent seven years at school in England. Discipline at the school was strict and it is thought that his only moments of happiness occured when he wrote to his mother or played cricket.

After leaving school, Arthur went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. It was here he met Dr Joseph Bell. Arthur based his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, on this man. The first story he wrote which featured the great detective was called A Study In Scarlet.

Conan Doyle’s father married Mary Foley. She was 17 when she got married and a lively and very well educated young lady. She loved books and was a great story teller. Arthur wrote in his autobiography, ‘In my early childhood, as far as I can remember anything at all, the vivid stories she would tell me stand out so clearly that they obscure the real facts of my life.’

His father’s excessive drinking kept the family relatively poor and caused a strong bond to form between Arthur and his mother. While he was away in England at school, he wrote to her regularly, a habit that lasted for the rest of her life. It was at school he realised he, too, had the gift of story telling.

On returning home at the age of 17, one of the first things he did was to co-sign the papers that put his father into a lunatic asylum.

Arthur Conan Doyle became a medical student after leaving the Jesuit school in England. He studied at the University of Edinburgh and met some future authors, such as James Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson. He also met Dr Joseph Bell, one of his teachers, who is said to have impressed Arthur with his qualities of observation and deduction.

In March 1886, Conan Doyle began work on a story that was to make him a household name.

A Study In Scarlet was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887 and introduced us to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.