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Holmes story appeared, titled A Study in Scarlet. Over the next few years, Conan Doyle would write a historical novel, open a new ocular practice, explore spiritualism, and send Holmes on further thrilling exploits. A second novel, The Sign of Four, came out in 1890, and starting in 1891 the Holmes stories regularly appeared in the Strand Magazine . Two collections, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1892 and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in 1893, collected a total of twenty-four of the mysteries. However, Conan Doyle felt that work on the Holmes stories was keeping him from writing on more serious historical topics. To the shock of his readers, in the 1893 story called “The Final Problem” he described the death of his famous sleuth.

In 1894 Conan Doyle published Round the Red Lamp, a collection of short stories with a medical theme; in 1895 The Stark Munro Letters, an autobiographical novel; and in 1896 The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, set in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1900 he traveled to South Africa in the capacity of war-time physician in Cape Town; his treatise on the Boer War earned him a knighthood in 1902. That same year Conan Doyle published The Hound of the Baskervilles, set before the story that had finished Holmes off in 1893. In 1903 new Holmes stories started to appear in the Strand.

In the coming years, Conan Doyle produced more popular books on a variety of subjects, including three new collections of stories—The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), His Last Bow (1917), and The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)—plus a final Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear (1915). Among many other non-Holmes projects were the three Challenger novels, historical fiction and nonfiction, and several books on spiritualism. He also championed the rights of the wrongly accused, in two separate cases exonerating innocent men.

With the onset of World War I, Conan Doyle served as a war correspondent on several major European battlefields. Following the war, he became a passionate advocate of spiritualism, which he embraced in part to communicate with his eldest son, Kingsley, who had died from influenza aggravated by war wounds. From 1920 until his death, the author wrote, traveled, and lectured to promote his belief in a spiritual life after the death of the body. After a long, demanding journey through Scandinavia, Arthur Conan Doyle suffered a heart attack; he died a few months later, on July 7, 1930, in Sussex.

THE WORLD OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE AND SHERLOCK HOLMES

1859 Arthur Conan Doyle is born on May 22 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second child and eldest son of ten children that will be born to Charles and Mary Foley Doyle. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities are published.

1868 Arthur attends school with the Jesuits in England; later he will re ject Catholicism.

1871 Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass is published. The first book of George Eliot’s Middlemarch is published. Royal Albert Hall, one of Britain’s most important concert venues, opens in London.

1876 Conan Doyle enrolls in the University of Edinburgh Medical School. As a student, he takes various jobs to help his family, in cluding serving as a ship’s doctor on an Arctic voyage. While at Ed inburgh, he meets Dr. Joseph Bell, whose analytical capabilities amaze his patients and students; Bell later becomes a model for Sherlock Holmes.

1879 “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” Conan Doyle’s first story, is pub lished in Chambers’s Journal , an Edinburgh weekly.

1881 Conan Doyle receives his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery qualifications, and takes a position as ship’s doctor on a steamer en route to West Africa.

1882 He returns to Great Britain and establishes his medical practice.

1885 Conan Doyle receives his M.D. degree. He marries Louise Hawkins; her poor health makes the marriage a difficult one.

1887 A Study in Scarlet, the debut Sherlock Holmes story, is published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual .

1889 Conan Doyle’s short novel The Mystery of Cloomber, which is con