Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan, an English novelist. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. He was educated at a Roman Catholic college in Lancashire, and at the University of Edinburgh. He practiced as a physician for a time, but having published several successful stories, he gave over the profession of medicine for literature. Among his best known stories are Micah Clarke, A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The White Company. Doyle is most noted, however, for his creation of the character of Sherlock Holmes. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are a series of detective stories which have been extremely popular. Holmes is represented as an amateur detective of great skill. By scientific knowledge and methods of reasoning, he makes use of the most inconsequential facts to discover remote and surprising causes. He is a cocaine fiend, and is very eccentric, but, withal, so real an individual that his personality makes a lasting impression upon the reader. Aside from the twelve tales in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the character of Holmes appears in many other stories, especially in a series entitled The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was knighted in 1902.