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Arthur Conan Doyle

As a child

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859, in Edinburgh. Doyle had a Catholic upbringing, and at the age of eight was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, in Stonyhurst. By the time he left school, Doyle had rejected Christianity altogether and become an agnostic.

As an adult

From 1876 to 1881, Doyle studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Throughout his studies, Doyle began writing. His first published works was a short story in the University of Edinburgh journal. Following his studies, Doyle worked as a ship doctor on a voyage to West Africa.On his return Doyle moved to Plymouth to open up his own practice. The unsuccessful outcome of the practice, allowed Doyle the time to pursue is joy of writing.

As an artist

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is most famous as the creator of one of literature's greatest characters – the master detective, Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle wrote sixty different stories featuring the enigmatic sleuth including The Hound of the Baskervilles. Inspired by local legends of ghostly hounds that roamed Dartmoor, the tale was published in 1901 in The Strand magazine and was an instant success. Such was the popularity of Conan Doyle's creation that the magazine's circulation rose by an amazing thirty thousand copies overnight. Described by the author himself as "a real creeper", The Hound of the Baskervilles has, nearly a century on, proved to be an enduring and popular classic of crime fiction.


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