The budding storyteller
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859. The greatest influence on his youth was his mother Mary Doyle, who was both a passionate reader and very talented storyteller. Conan Doyle never forgot the way she would "sink her voice to a horror-stricken whisper" while spinning her yarns, and young Arthur followed suit while at boarding school, where he entertained other pupils with his own thrilling tales.

However, his creativity took a back seat as he grew older and decided upon a career in medicine. He enrolled at the University of Edinburgh at the same time as James Barrie, who'd go onto create Peter Pan, and Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The model for Sherlock Holmes
It was while at medical school that Conan Doyle came under the influence of Dr Joseph Bell, a brilliant lecturer whose powers of observation were so great that he could deduce facts about a person simply by giving them a swift glance. It was Bell who would go onto serve as the model for Sherlock Holmes, although Conan Doyle wouldn't develop the detective for quite some time yet.

Instead, he took to writing historical and naval stories which were published in literary journals. He still made plenty of time for his medical career however, and even worked as a ship's surgeon on a whaling boat in the Arctic Circle - a gruelling experience which inspired another of his early published stories.

The birth of Holmes
The landmark year in Conan Doyle's life was 1886, when - while still a practising doctor - he began to write a mystery story called A Tangled Skein. It featured two central characters - a detective named Sherrinford Holmes, and a sidekick called Ormond Sacker.

Unhappy with these names, he eventually simplified them to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and changed the title of the novel to A Study in Scarlet. It proved a massive success when published the following year, but - contrary to popular belief - it wasn't the first modern detective tale. In fact, the American writer Edgar Allan Poe had already created the genre with his own hero, a detective named Dupin. Conan Doyle was clearly aware that he might be compared to Poe, and cheekily included a scene in A Study in Scarlet where Holmes sneers at Dupin's "primitive" methods.

Killing the cash cow
A Study in Scarlet proved an overnight sensation, and Conan Doyle was immediately commissioned to write many more Sherlock Holmes stories. Money poured in, but Conan Doyle was never very happy about all the attention Holmes garnered. He regarded the tales as lightweight and disposable, and continued to work on "serious" historical novels which he personally preferred writing.

Eventually this dual existence proved too much, and he decided it was time to kill off Holmes and concentrate entirely on his other novels. The big moment came in 1893 with the publication of The Final Problem, in which Holmes plunged to his death while fighting with his nemesis Moriarty. A brilliant end perhaps, but the readers didn't like this one jot. In fact, over 20,000 people immediately cancelled their subscription to the magazine which published the Holmes stories, and Conan Doyle was flooded with very angry letters. Almost a decade later he gave into public demand and brought Holmes back, explaining that he'd never actually fallen off the mountain after all... phew!

Sherlock Holmes books by Conan Doyle (1859 -1930)

A Study in Scarlet 1887 (Novel)

The Sign of Four 1890 (Novel)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1892 (Short story collection)

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes 1894 (Short story collection)

The Hound of the Baskervilles 1902 (Novel)

The Return of Sherlock Holmes 1905 (Short story collection)

The Valley of Fear 1915 (Novel)

His Last Bow 1917 (Short story collection)

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes 1927 (Short story collection)