The quest for Sherlock Holmes: a biographical study of Arthur Conan Doyle

Traces the life of the Scottish writer and discusses the influence of his childhood and education on his fiction writing.

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle? Yes, that was the name by which the future creator of Sherlock Holmes was baptised in Edinburgh in 1859. As Holmes would say, the discovery is in itself a trivial one, but it does symbplise that this book presents a new story and a new character. Using extensive new evidence in Edinburgh, Stonyhurst (where Arthur Conan Doyle went to school) and elsewhere, Owen Dudley Edwards shows how Conan Doyle's boyhood experiences shaped his literary attitudes and much of the genius of his writing.