Arthur Conan Doyle

Author

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British author, physician, and one of the most influential writers in the history of crime fiction. He is the creator of Sherlock Holmes, the world's most famous fictional detective, whose adventures have been translated into every major language, adapted into countless films, television series, and stage... productions, and have defined the detective fiction genre for well over a century. Born in Edinburgh in 1859 into an Irish Catholic family, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, where one of his professors — the surgeon Joseph Bell, famous for his powers of observation and deduction — became the inspiration for Holmes. A Study in Scarlet (1887) introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson to the world. The Sign of the Four (1890), the stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905) made Holmes and Watson the most famous literary partnership in history. Holmes is the archetypal consulting detective — brilliant, eccentric, a master of disguise, a virtuoso of deductive reasoning, and deeply flawed. Watson is the loyal friend and narrator whose humanity grounds the stories. Together, they investigate crimes across Victorian and Edwardian London and beyond, from the fog-bound streets of Baker Street to the moors of Devon. Beyond Holmes, Doyle wrote the Professor Challenger novels, historical fiction, war journalism, and extensive writings on spiritualism, which consumed much of his later life. Doyle died in 1930, but Holmes has never gone out of print and remains one of the most recognisable characters in all of fiction. The audiobook editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories are among the most popular in the world, with generations of narrators bringing the atmosphere of Victorian London to vivid life. Doyle's books and audiobooks are essential — the foundation of modern detective fiction and a permanent pleasure. Read more Show less