Today, let’s take a look at
one of the most popular British authors of all time – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
If anyone out there is thinking that you don’t recognise the name, I guarantee
you will know the name of the best loved of all his characters – Sherlock
Holmes. I was right wasn’t I? Everyone knows Sherlock Holmes, and has either
read the books or watched the TV series or films. However, there is far more to
this story than just one character!
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
(1859 – 1930) was born in Scotland, to parents of Irish descent. Despite his
father’s alcoholism and psychiatric
illness, Arthur, with financial help from his uncles, received a good education
and attended Edinburgh University from 1886 to 1871. Here he studied medicine,
to follow his chosen career as a doctor. Whilst he was studying he began
writing short stories and during this time he had both his first work of
fiction and of non-fiction published.
Indeed, this is the time when
we first met Watson and Sherlock Holmes! Although these were the characters
that catapulted him to fame, Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to be seen as a serious
writer and is believed to have preferred some of his other writings, including
serious historical novels, plays and poems.
As well as writing, Arthur
continued with his studies and worked as a ship’s surgeon before opening his
own medical practice. Then in 1890 he went to Vienna to study ophthalmology (a science that looks
at the anatomy, physiology and
diseases of the eye). During this period he also married,
became a father and enjoyed a sporting career, playing football, cricket and
golf. However, after a serious bout of influenza he decided that trying to
combine a medical and writing career was too much and decided to abandon his
medical career to concentrate in his writing.
In the story “The Final
Problem” published 1893 Arthur had decided to kill off the character of
Sherlock Homes and both Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunged to their deaths
at the Reichenbach falls. This caused a public outcry, and twenty thousand
readers cancelled their subscription to the Strand magazine that printed the
stories. However, ten years later he wrote another Holmes story “The Adventure
of the Empty House” in which he explained that only Moriarty had fallen but
Holmes had decided to allow others to believe he had died to escape his
enemies! Holmes later featured in many more stories and novels.
Arthur Conan Doyle continued
to lead busy life writing, volunteering as an army doctor in the Boer War (1899
– 1902) and remarrying after the death of his first wife. Both he and his
second wife had an interest in spiritualism, possibly strengthened after the
death of his eldest son from injuries sustained during the First World War. He
also stood twice for Parliament, although he was never elected as an MP, and
used his money and influence to fight miscarriages of justice in the British
Courts.
However, the bit of his story
that I find most interesting is his possible involvement in the Piltdown man
hoax of 1912. I have to emphasise “possible” as nothing has been proved! In
1912 bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously
unknown human. They were said to have been found in a gravel pit in Piltdown, East
Sussex, England. It wasn’t until 1953 that it was proved to be a forgery and
that the lower jaw of an orang-utan had been deliberately mixed with a modern
human skull. Prior to this it was believed by many scientists to be the
evolutionary “missing link” between apes and humans. This hoax is unusual for a
couple of reasons. Firstly as it deals with the nature of evolution, and also
as it was not proved to be a hoax for forty years! So where does our author fit
into all this? Well, it has been suggested that Arthur Conan Doyle was the
perpetrator of this hoax and that his novel “The Lost World” published 1912
holds many encrypted clues regarding his involvement. Is this true? I have no
idea; maybe you need to try and read the evidence and make up your own mind!
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