Born in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 22nd, 1859, Arthur Conan Doyle was the son of watercolor artist Charles Altmont Doyle and Mary Foley Doyle, and the nephew of Dickie Doyle, famous for his political cartoons in "Punch". Arthur was schooled at Stonyhurst, a Jesuit preparatory school, and at Feldkirch in Austria, and received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Edinburgh University. It was here that two events occurred which would shape his life. He met Dr. Joseph Bell, who astounded students with his ability to deduce details of patients' lives from minute clues in their appearance; and here that he wrote "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley", his first published work (he was paid three guineas by Chamber's Journal for it). After graduation, while trying to build up his medical practice in Southsea, Doyle occupied his abundant free time and augmented his income by writing more short stories. Happily for us all, he conceived the idea of a series of tales with a central character, modeled on Dr. Bell and his skill at logic and deduction. Sherlock Holmes was born.
From the publication of "A Study in Scarlet" in Beeton's Christmas Annual of 1887, Holmes and Watson were a runaway hit. Doyle wrote four full-length novels and fifty-six short stories around these characters, as well as historical novels ("The White Company, Micah Clarke"), science fiction (the Professor Challenger tales), humorous sketches ("Brigadier Gerard") and travel stories. Doyle often felt that Holmes overshadowed his other writings, and even killed the detective off in "The Final Problem". The world was shocked; many Britons wore mourning for Sherlock Holmes. The public demand (and a huge offer from his publishers) made Doyle revive Holmes. Not one of the Sherlock Holmes stories has ever been out of print since first published over one hundred years ago, an rare accomplishment.
As a writer, Doyle was ahead of his time in many ways. To the usual whizz-bang dazzle of science fiction, he added concern for the ethical use of technology (as Gene Roddenberry did with "Star Trek"). Sherlock Holmes described fingerprinting and the use of plaster casts for footprints and tire tracks before they were common police procedure. Doyle even anticipated Tom Clancy's "Hunt for Red October" in "Danger!", a tale of German submarines published just before the First World War. When "Danger!" was published, the public ridiculed Doyle's idea of a German submarine blockade, but when the war came, the blockade happened, and a captured U-Boat officer told the press that Doyle's novel was used as a textbook in the German U-Boat school. There was a public outcry, and Doyle was almost tried for treason; fortunately, clearer heads prevailed.
Arthur Conan Doyle was the last Renaissance Man; a doctor (in addition to his general practice and later specialization in ophthalmology, he served as ship's surgeon on a whaler and in a South African field hospital during the Boer War), a sportsman who excelled at games from boxing to billiards, a member of the Royal Automobile Club's racing team which won the Price Henry Race in 1911, an inventor, a lecturer, a dramatist, poet and author, an investigator of real-life crimes (he freed George Edalji from jail by exposing a racially motivated frame-up), a leader of men who organized volunteers during the war, a hard-headed business man, a spiritualist (which put him at odds with his good friend Harry Houdini, who exposed false mediums), and a loving husband and father. He was knighted in 1902 for exposing the scandalous and inhuman treatment of natives and prisoners in the Boer War with his book "The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct".
At the age of 71, his health began to fail. On July 7th, 1930, Conan Doyle sat with his family in the rose garden of his house at Windlesham, looked out over the South Downs, and went to the afterlife in which he so fervently believed. On his headstone is carved a simple testimonial to the kind of man that he was:
Steel True, Blade Straight