Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective in literature and one of the most enduring characters in the English canon. Doyle’s work was instrumental in popularizing the mystery genre, with Sherlock epitomizing the figure of the detective.

A Scottish author born in 1859, Conan Doyle’s first career was in medicine. He became a doctor, but ultimately yearned to exercise his talents as a storyteller. His first novel, The Narrative of John Smith, was published in 1883, starting his long career of writing. He did not create a bona fide success, however, until he published his first Sherlock Holmes mystery, A Study in Scarlet (1887), which took hold in England and the United States. Through the Sherlock novels, Doyle established the classic characters and their traits: Sherlock Holmes and his deductive reasoning, logic, and genius, Holmes’ partner in the emotionally intelligent John Watson, and his nemesis in the brilliant Moriarty. Doyle only wrote three more Holmes novels before killing off the character in 1893’s The Final Problem in order to prevent the detective from distracting from what Doyle considered to be his more high brow works. However, the resulting public outcry and the author’s financial strain led to Doyle bringing the character back by writing short stories starring the detective. Despite Doyle’s lifelong attempts to find success with other works, his legacy is far and away Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is iconic and popular to this day, having accumulated numerous reimaginings, adaptations, and cultural references. Many prominent productions in the 2010s and 2020s continue to use his image, with a massively popular BBC series (2010-2017), two blockbuster films starring Robert Downey Jr. (2009 and 2011), and two Netflix films featuring a reimagined universe with Sherlock’s younger sister (2019 and 2022). The prominence of adaptations over a hundred years after the release of A Study in Scarlet speaks to the enduring fascination the world has with Sherlock Holmes and thoroughly categorizes the detective as one of the most recognizable figures in pop culture.

Doyle was highly active in his life besides his writing career, writing for political and spiritual causes. He was knighted in 1902 for a pamphlet he wrote justifying Britain’s engagement in the Boer war. He ran for parliament unsuccessfully twice and served in several wars as a doctor. He also was an investigator in his own right, as several times he took it upon himself to try and prove the innocence of men he thought were wrongfully accused of crimes. In a strange combination, Doyle and Harry Houdini met and became acquainted, sharing several years of friendship before contention over Doyle’s increasing interest in spiritualism ended the relationship. His many travels and life experiences served as inspiration in his Sherlock stories, as he based several of his recurring characters off of real people he met along his own journey.

Though most known for his four Holmes novels and 56 short stories starring the detective, Doyle wrote over a hundred novels and numerous short stories and plays. He died of a heart attack in 1930. His body was famously found in a garden with one hand over his heart and the other curled around a flower.