Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and writer, born in Edinburgh, who created Sherlock Holmes while waiting for patients in his Southsea practice. Four novels and fifty-six stories about the detective, from A Study in Scarlet in 1887 to the collections The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs, The Return and His Last Bow, made Holmes the most famous character in English fiction. Doyle himself preferred his historical novels and his Professor Challenger stories, including The Lost World. He killed Holmes off in 1893 and was pressured into reviving him. In later life he devoted much of his energy and money to spiritualism.