Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Arnold Genthe / Public domain
1914 photograph from
The New York Times Company

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) is far and away most well-known for his creation of what is easily the most famous detective character ever, and among the most famous characters in the world, period: Sherlock Holmes. Doyle originally created Holmes in 1887 and went on to feature him in four novels and fifty-six short stories, primarily chronicled by Holmes's friend and sometimes roommate, Dr. John Watson. Holmes is of course renowned for his keen observational and deductive skills, his rigorously logical methods, and rather poor social graces. This is in rather sharp opposition to Doyle himself, who rather notoriously spent much of his later life stumping for psychics and spiritualists, proclaiming fairy photographs to be real, and refusing to believe that his one-time friend Harry Houdini (who was very famously anti-spiritualist) did not actually have magic powers.


"A Scandal in Bohemia"
In which Holmes is dealt a rare defeat by one Irene Adler while attempting to recover an incriminating photograph of the King of Bohemia.