59 Fun Facts About Arthur Conan Doyle

In which city was Arthur Conan Doyle born in 1859?

Edinburgh honours its native son with a statue not of Doyle but of Sherlock Holmes, in Picardy Place near the house where he was born.

What was Doyle's profession before he became a full-time writer?

Doyle was a physician who took his MD in 1885 with a thesis on tabes dorsalis, a nerve disease caused by untreated syphilis.

How was 'Conan' recorded in Arthur Conan Doyle's baptism entry?

His baptism entry lists Conan as a given name and Michael Conan as his godfather; he began using Conan as a sort of surname after school.

Why was the Doyle family split up and housed with different families in 1864?

His father's growing alcoholism later saw Charles Altamont Doyle committed to asylums, and he died at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries in 1893.

Which Jesuit school in Lancashire did Doyle attend until 1875?

Doyle studied at Stonyhurst College from age nine to sixteen, and later said he was not unhappy there but had no fond memories of it.

On what kind of vessel did Doyle serve as ship's doctor in 1880?

Doyle was surgeon on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead, which met the Eira expedition before it went on to name Cape Flora in Franz Josef Land.

Which real maritime mystery did Doyle's 'J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement' popularise, with invented details that stuck?

Doyle's story renamed the Mary Celeste the 'Marie Celeste', and its reach left many people believing that was the ship's real name.

In which town did Doyle set up an unsuccessful medical practice in 1882, arriving with less than £10?

Doyle's practice in Southsea, Portsmouth, never took off, and while waiting for patients he went back to writing fiction, including his first Holmes novel.

Which medical specialism did Doyle try, and fail, to master in Vienna in 1891?

Doyle gave up ophthalmology in Vienna because he couldn't follow the German medical terms, and spent the rest of his stay ice skating with his wife.

How long did it take Doyle to write A Study in Scarlet?

Doyle wrote it in under three weeks at 27, and it introduced Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson to readers.

How much did Ward Lock pay Doyle for all rights to his first Holmes novel?

Ward Lock paid just £25 for all rights, and the story then waited a year before appearing in Beeton's Christmas Annual.

Which of Doyle's university teachers was the chief model for Sherlock Holmes?

Joseph Bell could diagnose patients before they opened their mouths, and Doyle wrote to him, 'It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes.'

Which illustrator first drew Sherlock Holmes in a deerstalker, a cap Doyle's stories never name?

Sidney Paget first drew the deerstalker for 'The Boscombe Valley Mystery' in 1891, where Doyle's text gives Holmes only a 'close-fitting cloth cap'.

Where did the monthly Sherlock Holmes short stories appear from 1891, making Doyle one of the best-paid writers?

The Strand Magazine made Holmes a sensation, and it reportedly lost more than 20,000 subscribers when Doyle killed him off.

In Doyle's 'A Scandal in Bohemia', which opera singer outwits Sherlock Holmes?

Irene Adler, disguised as a young man, follows Holmes home and wishes him good night, then leaves England before he can catch her.

At which Swiss waterfall did Doyle send Holmes and Moriarty to their apparent deaths?

Doyle chose the Reichenbach Falls after seeing them on a Swiss holiday, and nearby Meiringen now has a Sherlock Holmes museum.

Which 1901 novel was the first Holmes novel since his apparent death?

The Hound of the Baskervilles is set before Holmes's 'death', and only in 1903 did 'The Empty House' reveal that he had faked his fall.

Which collection holds the last twelve of Doyle's 56 Holmes stories?

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes came out in 1927, 34 years after Doyle had tried to kill the detective off in 'The Final Problem'.

Which irascible scientist did Doyle create for The Lost World in 1912?

Professor Challenger, a burly zoologist with a volatile temper, leads the expedition, and the book's success made 'lost world' a whole adventure subgenre.

Doyle's humorous stories about a Napoleonic soldier feature which character?

Brigadier Gerard is a vain hussar sure he is France's bravest soldier, and Doyle drew partly on the memoirs of the real cavalryman Marbot.

Under what pseudonym did Doyle play in goal for an amateur football club?

As 'A. C. Smith', Doyle kept goal for an amateur football club, and he later played ten first-class cricket matches for the MCC.

Doyle's single first-class cricket wicket for the MCC was which legendary batsman?

Doyle's only first-class wicket was W. G. Grace, and he wrote a poem about it; his highest first-class score was 43, against London County.

Which cricket side, captained by Doyle, also included the creators of Jeeves and Winnie-the-Pooh?

The Authors XI played from 1899 to 1912 with Doyle as captain, and A. A. Milne was reputed to be its best fielder.

In 1901 Doyle judged Eugen Sandow's world-first major competition in which sport?

Sandow's bodybuilding contest filled the Royal Albert Hall so completely that people were turned away at the door.

Doyle was invited in 1909 to referee which heavyweight championship fight in Reno, Nevada?

After Doyle declined, promoter Tex Rickard refereed the James Jeffries v Jack Johnson fight himself.

What is Doyle's 1894 magazine account of crossing a pass from Davos credited with popularising?

Doyle skied from Davos into Arosa with two local guides, and his account of the trip drew British skiing fans to Switzerland.

What was the name of Doyle's first wife, whom he married in 1885 and who suffered from tuberculosis?

Louisa Hawkins, known as 'Touie', had two children with Doyle and died of tuberculosis in 1906.

Which American actor co-wrote the 1899 play Sherlock Holmes with Doyle and starred as the detective?

William Gillette cabled Doyle 'May I marry Holmes?', and Doyle replied that he could marry him, murder him or do anything he liked to him.

During which war did Doyle serve as a volunteer doctor at a field hospital in Bloemfontein?

During the Second Boer War Doyle wrote a pamphlet defending Britain's conduct, and he believed it was the reason he was knighted.

Which monarch knighted Doyle in the 1902 Coronation Honours?

Edward VII's 1902 Coronation Honours made 'Arthur Conan Doyle, MD' a Knight Bachelor.

For which party did Doyle twice stand unsuccessfully for Parliament?

As a Liberal Unionist, Doyle took about 44% of the vote in both of his contests, in 1900 and 1906, and lost each time.

Doyle's 1909 pamphlet The Crime of the Congo backed a reform campaign led by journalist E. D. Morel and which diplomat?

Doyle pleaded unsuccessfully for clemency for Roger Casement before his 1916 execution for treason.

Which wrongly convicted solicitor of Parsi heritage did Doyle help clear in 1906?

George Edalji's case helped bring about the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907, and Julian Barnes retold it in the novel Arthur & George.

Doyle paid most of the costs of whose successful 1928 appeal against a Glasgow murder conviction?

Oscar Slater's conviction for the 1908 murder of Marion Gilchrist was quashed in July 1928 because the judge had failed to direct the jury properly.

In the year he first declared himself a spiritualist, Doyle was also initiated into which fraternal order?

Doyle joined the Freemasons in January 1887, resigned in 1889, returned in 1902 and quit for good in 1911.

Whose psychic abilities strengthened Doyle's spiritualist faith in 1916?

His children's nanny, Lily Loder Symonds, seemed psychic to Doyle, and two years later he published his first spiritualist work, The New Revelation.

Doyle's 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies defended which later-admitted hoax?

The Cottingley photographs were faked with cardboard cutouts, and the cousins admitted it in 1983, though both maintained they had really seen fairies.

Which American magician fell out publicly with Doyle after Doyle insisted his tricks were supernatural?

Harry Houdini spent the 1920s exposing fraudulent mediums, yet Doyle's The Edge of the Unknown still claimed he used supernatural powers.

How did Doyle react when Harry Price exposed spirit photographer William Hope in 1922?

Doyle defended Hope and threatened Price, then led 84 members out of the Society for Psychical Research in protest.

Which sceptic debated Doyle on spiritualism at Queen's Hall in 1920, then published a booklet saying he was duped?

Joseph McCabe, a former Franciscan priest, argued in Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? that Doyle had been fooled by mediums' tricks.

Which 1912 scientific hoax has Doyle been accused of, though 2016 DNA evidence pointed to Charles Dawson?

Historian Richard Milner argued Doyle may have forged Piltdown Man, with a motive of revenge on scientists who had debunked one of his favourite psychics.

What was the name of the house near Hindhead that Doyle helped design and lived in from 1897 to 1907?

Doyle built Undershaw for its dry, sheltered air, which he thought best for his wife's tuberculosis, and a 2012 High Court ruling saved it from becoming flats.

Under what name did the Crimes Club, founded by Doyle in 1903, become known?

Our Society caps its membership at 100, meets four times a year at a Russell Square hotel under the Chatham House Rule, and uses Doyle's silhouette as its logo.

What were Doyle's last words, addressed to his wife?

'You are wonderful.' were Doyle's last words to his wife, spoken after he was found clutching his chest in the hall of his home.

Where was Doyle finally reinterred alongside his wife?

Doyle was first buried in the rose garden at his home, then reinterred beside his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest.

How does the epitaph on Doyle's gravestone begin?

'Steel true / Blade straight' comes first on the stone, followed by his name, 'Knight', and a line hailing him as patriot and man of letters.

Which Sherlock Holmes story did Doyle himself rate as the best of them all?

The Speckled Band, Doyle's own favourite, hinges on a 'swamp adder' that no real snake fully matches, and he later adapted it for the stage.

Doyle's first academic article, in the British Medical Journal in 1879, studied which substance as a poison?

Doyle took gelsemium himself, raising the dose every day until he could no longer stand the ill effects, and reported the results in the BMJ.

Which fellow author collaborated with Doyle in 1893 on the libretto of the comic opera Jane Annie?

J. M. Barrie couldn't finish the libretto alone, so he recruited Doyle, but Jane Annie closed after only 50 performances as the Savoy's first real flop.

Doyle's brother-in-law E. W. Hornung created which gentleman-thief character?

Raffles, a gentleman thief with a Watson-like sidekick, inverted Holmes, and Hornung dedicated the first book to Doyle as 'This Form of Flattery'.

What did Doyle reportedly design for a hotel in Jasper National Park in 1914?

Doyle is said to have helped design a golf course and ancillary buildings there, none of which survive, and in 1912 he designed an extension for Lyndhurst's Grand Hotel.

What was the name of Doyle's second wife, with whom he moved to Sussex in 1907?

Doyle met Jean Leckie in 1897 but kept their relationship platonic out of loyalty to his first wife, and married Jean the year after her death.

In which Sussex town, where a statue honours him, did Doyle spend his last 23 years?

Crowborough has a statue of Doyle at Crowborough Cross, and he died at his home there in 1930.

In 2009 Doyle was one of ten people chosen by the Royal Mail for which commemorative stamp series?

Doyle's Eminent Britons stamp came out in 2009, 150 years after his birth.

What led Doyle to start a rifle club with a 100-yard range at home in 1900?

Poor British shooting in a war convinced Doyle that ordinary men needed marksmanship training, so he backed cheap 'miniature' rifle ranges.

From 1902 Doyle served as a Deputy-Lieutenant of which English county?

Doyle was made a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey while living near Hindhead, and the next year he was appointed to the Order of St John.

The Sign of the Four, the second Holmes novel, first appeared in February 1890 in which magazine?

Lippincott's commissioned The Sign of the Four at an 1889 London dinner where Oscar Wilde was also signed up and went on to deliver The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Doyle wrote the play Waterloo, about a Napoleonic War veteran, for which celebrated actor?

Henry Irving played the old soldier Corporal Gregory Brewster in Waterloo, and the next year he became the first actor ever knighted.

Doyle spent 1875–76 perfecting his German at the Jesuit school Stella Matutina in which country?

Stella Matutina was in Feldkirch, Austria, and Doyle's drift away from religion has been blamed on its less strict regime.