Doyle’s first wife, Louisa, died in 1893, and he subsequently remarried with Jean Leckie and had three children with her. At one point, his own mother talked him out of killing off the famous detective. Doyle went on to write a total of 60 Sherlock Holmes stories (four of them novel-length), though he was famously ambivalent about his most successful creation. The Sign of the Four followed in 1890, though Doyle felt that his publishers had taken advantage of him and coerced him into unfavorable terms. His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published when Doyle was 27 and was well received. In 1885, Doyle married his first wife, Louisa Hawkins, and had two children with her. During this period, Doyle started composing stories but didn’t publish any until a few years later. Joseph Bell, whose astute methods of observation and diagnosis were to have a great effect on Doyle’s writing. He later went to medical school in Edinburgh, training as a doctor under the tutelage of Dr.

Doyle’s wealthy uncles paid for their nephew to board at the Hodder Place school in Lancashire from 1868 to 1870, though Doyle found its methods harsh and outdated.

Despite his later reputation as a frequenter of the London gentlemen’s clubs, Doyle’s upbringing was tough-his father, Charles Doyle, suffered from alcoholism and psychiatric illness. Arthur Conan Doyle was born to Irish Catholic parents in Scotland during the middle of the Queen Victoria’s reign over the United Kingdom.

The sign of four by arthur conan doyle