The Doctor and the Detective: A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Hardcover

Booth, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312242514 ISBN 13: 9780312242510

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2000

Synopsis

This entertaining, smart biography of Arthur Conan Doyle presents a modern day interpretation of the man who, contrary to his best efforts, will always be known as the creator of the great detective, Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was, however, much more, as Booth shows us in this intriguing study of a man who thrived on the times in which he lived. While Holmes fans will be captivated by the various tidbits that offer insight into their hero's creation; others will be fascinated by this living embodiment of the Victorian masculine ideal.

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Reviews

Although the burly Edinburgh doctor who believed in fairies will always be linked with an angular, coolly rational English consulting detective, Booth (a Booker Prize nominee for Industry of Souls) is only one of many Sherlock Holmes fans and Arthur Conan Doyle biographers to try to separate the two. Booth's polished life appears in the U.S. after Daniel Stashower's lengthy, more authoritative work from earlier this year (Teller of Tales, Forecasts, March 15). While Booth lacks Stashower's thoroughness, he makes up for it in style and astute judgments on Conan Doyle's life and achievements. Conan Doyle grew quickly frustrated with the way his most famous creation eclipsed all else but could not do without him. Booth, a professed admirer of Holmes but not a Baker Street Irregular, investigates Conan Doyle and his creation with shrewd detachment, including the possible link between Holmes's cocaine habit and Conan Doyle's old medical partner. Conan Doyle's achievements minus the Great Detective would have been respectable: writing everything from serious historical novels to proto-science fiction, running for Parliament, serving in the Boer War, lobbying for such social reforms as divorce laws, investigating wrongful convictions, observing the front lines in the Great War, etc. While Booth often skims over interesting episodes as well as boring ones, his intriguing interpretation of Conan Doyle's gullible promulgation of "psychic religion," i.e. spiritualism, presents us not only with an industrious Victorian's attempt to situate his need to believe in the modern world but also with Conan Doyle's rationalization of his family's twin heritage of mental instability and creativity. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A discursive, anecdotal life of the prolific creator of Sherlock Holmes by the equally prolific Booth (The Industry of Souls, 1999, etc.), who seeks here to put the bluff Sir Arthur on the same pedestal as the giants of English literature. Because the largest collection of Doyles papers has been kept from scholarly review by his heirs, every biographer who has knelt at the physician-turned-writers shrine has had to speculate on crucial details about Doyles relationship with his dissolute father, Charles, a failed illustrator who died in an asylum, and with the mysterious lodger Bryan Waller, who saved the struggling family from an Edinburgh poorhouse and might have fathered one of Doyle's sisters. Questions also persist about the sources of Doyle's inconsistent attitudes about science, spiritualism, racism, and womens suffrage. Moreover, Doyles rags-to-riches adventures as a world traveler, photographer, physician, wartime correspondent, amateur detective, patriotic booster, and, finally, writer of some of worlds best and worst genre fiction are so varied that every biographer buckles under the wealth of detail. Booth too often raises important clues to Doyles character only to abandon them in his rush to squeeze everything in. Still, he manages to set some records straight (Doyle had literary aspirations long before he became a physician; Sherlock Holmes was based on more originals than Joseph Bell, Doyles favorite medical school teacher), reprint some legends (though he spent months on research, at his peak Doyle could finish a novel in less than a week), celebrate his heros triumphs (Doyle was knighted for his pro-British pamphleteering during the Boer War, not for his writing), mourn his embarrassments (an ardent believer in the supernatural, he was easily duped by cynical magicians and fraudulent mediums), and explain his enduring popularity. Doyle emerges as an honorable pillar of Victorian pride and prejudice, even when he wrote ineptly and let others play him for a fool. (40 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

For Booth (Opium: A History), Conan Doyle is first and foremost a writer, whether of adventure stories, sf, detective stories, historical novels, essays, history, or journalism. Thus, he traces Conan Doyle's career far beyond Sherlock Holmes, offering the first full-length biography of him in 20 years. Because Conan Doyle's papers are currently closed, this biography is based on earlier biographies, supplemented by more recent studies that attempt to identify characters, look at Conan Doyle's interest in spiritualism, or examine his exploration of cocaine. As such, the book adds little new information on Doyle's life and work, and Booth is sometimes casual with his facts. (At one point he calls Edgar Allan Poe a "novelist," for example.) Still, this biography is an attractive and well-written introduction to Conan Doyle's body of work. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
-Thomas L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, GA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although the definitive biography of Conan Doyle has yet to be written (Booth, like other contemporary biographers, did not have access to Conan Doyle's private papers), this is about as complete a life story as readers are likely to find. Booth peppers the book with fascinating, little-known facts, revealing, among other things, that Conan Doyle's historical novel The White Company was so popular that, during World War II, the British government ensured there would be enough paper to keep the book in print. We also learn that Sidney Paget, whose illustrations of Sherlock Holmes defined the visual look of the character, got his job by accident; the editor of Strand Magazine had wanted Paget's brother. Refreshingly, Booth also avoids the tedious analysis of the Holmes stories that has made other lives of Conan Doyle almost unreadable. Readers who think of Conan Doyle only as the man who created Sherlock Holmes will be surprised, and perhaps even shocked, by this comprehensive and fascinating biography. David Pitt

Edition details

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312242514
• ISBN 13: 9780312242510
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384