Arthur Conan Doyle to 1893

This chapter opens with the declaration of war between Britain and the Boer Republics on 11 October 1899 and the reaction to it of 40-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed that the war would be over in a matter of months. It investigates Conan Doyle’s Scottish background: his family’s poverty, his father’s alcoholism, his resilient mother and the many siblings for whom he felt responsible. It draws readers’ attention to Conan Doyle’s autobiographical novel The Stark Munro Letters for a picture of his early years of struggle to succeed in medical practice. It describes his breakthrough as a writer and his happy marriage to Louise ‘Touie’ Hawkins; the success of the Sherlock Holmes stories allowed him to give up practicing as a doctor and to write full-time. The chapter concludes when Touie is diagnosed with consumption, ‘the great misfortune,’ as Conan Doyle said, ‘which darkened and deflected our lives.’