The Sherlock Holmes Mysteries

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was born in Edinburgh. After nine years in Jesuit schools, he went to Edinburgh University, receiving a degree in medicine in 1881. He became an eye specialist in Southsea with a distressing lack of success. Hoping to augment his income, he wrote his first novel, A Study in Scarlet. His detective, Sherlock Holmes, was modeled in part after Dr. Joseph Bell of the Edinburgh Infirmary, a man with spectacular powers of observation, analysis, and inference. Conan Doyle may have been influenced also by his admiration for the neat plots of Gaboriau and for Poe’s detective, M. Dupin. After several rejections, the story was sold to a British publisher for £25, and thus was born the world’s best-known and most-loved fictional detective. Fifty-nine more Sherlock Holmes adventures followed. Once, wearying of Holmes, his creator killed him off, but was forced by popular demand to resurrect him. Sir Arthur—he had been knighted for his defense of the British cause in The Great Boer War—became an ardent Spiritualist after the death of his son Kingsley, who had been wounded at the Somme in World War I. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in Sussex.Anne Perry is the author of more than forty novels, including two Victorian mystery series featuring William Monk and Thomas and Charlotte Pitt.  She lives in Scotland.Regina Barreca, Professor of English and Feminist Theory at the University of Connecticut, is the editor of the influential journal LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory.