Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859-7 July 1930) was born in Edinburgh Scotland to Charles Altamont Doyle and Mary Foley, who had married in 1855.

Conan Doyle's father was a chronic alcoholic, which led to his demise and committal to an institution when Conan Doyle co-signed the committal papers the year he returned from school. An idea of the circumstances surrounding the confinement of his father can be gleaned from his 1880 story The Surgeon of Gaster Fell His mother inspired his love of books and story telling from a young age, as he would later recall her "sinking her voice to a horror-stricken whisper" when telling stories in his youth.

Wealthy members of the Doyle family paid for Conan Doyle's education, which led to him being sent away to a Jesuit boarding school, Hodder Place, at Stonyhurst. He went on to study at Stonyhurst College before graduating in 1876 and returning to Edinburgh.

Conan Doyle was inspired by a lodge in his mother's home who studied medicine at Edinburgh University and decided to take up his medical studies there. During his time at the University he met fellow future authors including James Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson. But arguably Dr Joseph Bell would play a greater influence on his later literature as Conan Doyle recognised the skills of observation, logic, deduction and diagnosis which would become essential for his most famous character, Sherlock Holmes.

In his third year of study at Edinburgh he took the opportunity to act as a ship's surgeon on the Hope, a whaling boat which sailed to the Arctic Circle. This experience led to his first story about the sea, Captain of the Pole-Star.

In 1881, Conan Doyle obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degree. For the occassion he drew a humorous sketch of himself receiving his diploma, with the caption: "Licensed to Kill."

Conan Doyle's first employment after graduation was on board the Mayumba, a steamer heading from Liverpool to the West Coast of Africa. He found Africa detestable and on return to England took up a post with an unscrupulous doctor in Plymouth, an account of whom can be found in The Strak Munro Letters.

Conan Doyle left Plymouth and opened his first practice.

In August 1885 he married Louisa Hawkins, who he described in his memoirs as "gentle and amiable". Together they had two children, Mary Louise (1889) and Arthur Alleyne Kingsley (1892). Louisa suffered failing health which was diagnosed as tuberculosis and she became Conan Doyle's patient in the late years of their marriage, before her death in 1906. In 1907 he went on to marry Jean Elizabeth Leckie, whom it is said he fell in love with in 1897, but maintained a platonic relationship with in respect of his first wife. They had three children together: Denis Percy Stewart (1909); Adrian Malcolm (1910); and Jean Lena Annette (1912).