Conan Doyle: Man of Letters, Man About Town

This essay attempts to deduce Conan Doyle’s map of London from the writings of his long career and particularly his autobiography Memories and Adventures (1924). Here we can find a portrait of the layers of late-Victorian London: the historic centre of government, business, and the great institutions of national culture, the old working-class areas that surround it, and the new suburbs sprawling in every direction. In magazine and publishing offices, in West End theatres, in gentlemen’s clubs including the Authors’ Club, and in public and private dining rooms, Conan Doyle participated in the largely masculine business of literature as a highly clubbable man of letters who was also an energetic man about town. He journeyed into and across the city, coming in from the suburbs or up from the country. These journeys were repeated on a global scale as he travelled to foreign health resorts, battlefields in Africa and Europe, or on overseas lecture tours, always returning to the imperial and cultural capital, the centre of gravity of his life and work.