If Conan Doyle, Sherlock and Watson were on Facebook.

"Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle". Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - a man of paradoxes and imagination, as comfortable in the realm of cold deduction as he was in spiritualist séances and lost worlds.

If I were to become an apprentice to anyone, it would be to Sherlock, rushing madly behind him, crawling through the mud, hiding in dangerous dark bushes and wearing quaint disguises...It would be to Doyle's narcissistic, rude and loveable detective. Honestly, sometimes I forget that Holmes is a fictitious fanciful character from the mind of an absolute genius, a real person named Doyle.

Doyle was first a Physician - then turned Storyteller

Born in Edinburgh in 1859, he trained as a physician and earned his M.D. in 1885. But storytelling tugged harder than medicine. His early works included medical tales like Round the Red Lamp, and later, historical novels, science fiction, and poetry.

🕵️‍♂️ Creator of Sherlock Holmes

But, Conan Doyle is best known for creating Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant detective whose powers of observation and logic were inspired by Doyle’s medical professor, Dr. Joseph Bell. Holmes first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887), and went on to star in four novels and 56 short stories. Doyle’s writing helped define the detective genre and gave us enduring phrases like “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Although it is said that the phrase is a misquote, and only actually appears in but one of Doyle's stories in similar likeness, but different.

🌍 Beyond Baker Street - He also wrote:

- The Lost World, featuring Professor Challenger and prehistoric creatures

- Brigadier Gerard stories, humorous tales of a Napoleonic soldier

- Essays and memoirs on war, justice, and spiritualism

I believe that his passion for what lies beyond ordinary imagination, such as his Belief in the Unseen, played a great part in his ability to dream up such great and wonderful characters like Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson and The Lost World, among his many other achievements.

Later in life, Doyle became a passionate advocate for spiritualism, believing in communing with the dead. He even defended the infamous Cottingley Fairies photographs, convinced they were real.

The Cottingley Fairies - a story . where two young girls enchanted, tricked and mesmerized the world with scissors, cardboard, and a camera.

🧚See full story by Novel Here

🕵️‍♂️

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy, science fiction stories, humorous stories as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.

He had an unhappy childhood, and had mixed feelings about his road to an education. While Doyle was not unhappy at his school, Stonyhurst, he said he did not have any fond memories of it because the school was run on medieval principles: the only subjects covered were rudiments, rhetoric, Euclidean geometry, algebra, and the classics. He commented later in his life that this academic system could be excused only:

"on the plea that any exercise, however stupid in itself, forms a sort of mental dumbbell by which one can improve one's mind".

He found the school harsh, noting that, instead of compassion and warmth, it favored the threat of corporal punishment and ritual humiliation.

Despite many hardships in his early life, Doyle has left us with an enduring legacy of the techniques for solving crimes which are invaluable in the world of scientific deductions.

.........................................................

Prompt by Lana

Lana