It’s the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), who created one of the most famous characters in all of English literature, Sherlock Holmes, featured in four novels and over 50 short stories. Doyle also wrote historical fiction, such as The White Company (1891), and nonfiction, such as The Great Boer War (1900) and The British Campaign in France and Flanders (1916-1920, six volumes), but felt that Sherlock overshadowed all his other work. (Poor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I feel just terrible.)

Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second oldest of seven, and had a somewhat fractured childhood due to his father’s alcoholism and psychiatric issues. (He died in 1893.) Doyle was educated at home and in Jesuit schools in Lancashire, England, and eventually entered medical school at the University of Edinburgh, becoming a doctor in 1881 and getting his M.D.—then considered an advanced degree beyond what doctors usually got—in 1885 (incidentally the same year he married his first wife, Louisa Hawkins). One of Doyle’s professors, Dr. Joseph Bell, was incredibly observant and a crack diagnostician and became the model for Sherlock Holmes.

The first Sherlock Holmes novel appeared in 1887, A Study in Scarlet. It sank like a stone, but several years later Doyle was commissioned to write a sequel, The Sign of Four (1890), and then began to write stories featuring Sherlock at an astonishing rate; six of the stories were contracted for one a month (he was writing for magazines). Things really took off but Doyle felt that Sherlock wasn’t literary enough for him and started talking about killing him off; his mother got upset and talked him out of it for awhile, even suggesting some plots, but finally after another year’s worth of stories, he killed Sherlock by plunging him into an abyss with his nemesis, Moriarty, in The Adventure of the Final Problem. The public was upset: more than 20,000 people canceled their subscriptions to Strand Magazine, which had published the stories. More importantly, his mother was upset. Doyle held firm for some years but finally brought Sherlock back to life in 1903 with “The Adventure of the Empty House.” Blessed indeed is the slain literary hero whose author is offered enough money by an American publisher to resurrect him: Sherlock appeared in another 32 stories after that.

In 1906, Louisa died. Doyle was traumatized and sad but rallied the next year to marry Jean Elizabeth Leckie, whom he had loved since 1897, maintaining, however, a platonic relationship with her until their marriage out of respect to his first wife. (Two thoughts: life is complicated. And good show, Doyle.)

The creator of the mostly logical of detectives was himself a devout champion of spiritualism to the point that he didn’t believe his buddy, Harry Houdini, when Houdini insisted his own illusions were just that—illusions. Their friendship failed.

Doyle died at his home in Crowborough, Sussex.

Have a splendid Tuesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.