The Adventures of Arthur Conan DoyleI think I’ve mentioned before on The Fiction Desk that I’m partial to reading the odd literary biography. The Brief Lives from Hesperus are handy little books, but nothing quite matches the satisfaction of a bulkier, blow by blow account of an author’s life, particularly when that author is as interesting as Arthur Conan Doyle.

Russell Miller’s The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle was published late last year by Harvill Secker, and as usual with that imprint, it’s a lovely edition. (Am I the only person who wishes more publishers gave their hardbacks the solid, flat spines that Harvill Secker use?)

The basic facts of Arthur Conan Doyle’s life are pretty well known by now: the creation of Sherlock Holmes, his experiences as a wartime doctor, the obsession with spiritualism, and the unfortunate incidents of Piltdown Man and the Cottingley Fairies.

He was born into a family with a high mortality rate, and his father spent much of Conan Doyle’s life institutionalised for insanity brought on by alcoholism. His brother and son both died soon after the First World War from pneumonia related to the 1918 influenza pandemic (the famous Spanish flu, which killed far more people than the war itself).

As well as recounting some of the lesser known episodes from Arthur Conan Doyle’s life—for example, the summer he spent seal-clubbing in the Arctic—Miller’s book allows us to follow the chain of cause and effect, both literary (the creation of Sherlock Holmes as a consequence of his meetings with Dr. Joseph Bell and a perceived changed in the needs of London’s magazine readers) and personal; Miller does a good job of examining the author’s rising interest in spiritualism as a partial consequence of the loss of his brother and son. He also examines the effects of spiritualism on Conan Doyle’s own life and work. (His later novels, now largely forgotten, seem to have been muddled and unsuccessful attempts to blend adventure with heavy-handed allegorical references to his new beliefs.)

Aside from the damage he did to his literary reputation, what really stands out from Arthur Conan Doyle’s story is the way he seems to have become an anachronism in his own lifetime. He lived from 1859 to 1930, and that’s a complicated period over which to have lived a life. The world after World War One was a very different place to what it had been before the Boer War. A constant campaigner for a wide variety of causes, perhaps Arthur Conan Doyle wasn’t able to adjust to the changes in society with as much success as he had when he campaigned for change, and there’s a sense in the book that it was these changes as much as his bereavements that might have led Conan Doyle in seach of new causes, and new ways to try to make sense of the world.

Towards the end of his life, Arthur Conan Doyle was interviewed by a film crew about the creation of Holmes and his interest in spiritualism. The interview is described in the book, and you’ll also find it below.