The Mystery Author
by Amy DiLuna
as published in Read© magazine
Issue 13--March 5, 1999
Directions: Read the selection, and then answer the
questions. You do not need to write in complete sentences.
Murder, He Wrote
He could do just about everything. He
boxed and played cricket, golfed and raced
cars. He also hunted animals in faraway
places, sailed to West Africa as a ship’s doctor,
worked as a war correspondent in the
Egyptian desert, and served in England’s royal
army.
However, the accomplishment for
which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known
was the thing he liked least: the fictional
detective Sherlock Holmes, who was famous
for saying “Elementary!” to his sidekick, Dr.
John H. Watson. Long before Agatha Christie’s
Inspector Poirot started unraveling mysteries,
Doyle was entertaining readers all over the
world with his detective who solved crimes,
from kidnappings to murders, using his
famous deductive reasoning.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in
Scotland in 1859. His mother, Mary Doyle,
was a great storyteller and was the
inspiration for Doyle’s love of literature. His
father, Charles Doyle, was an artist and
illustrator.
Doyle’s father was often sick, spending
a lot of his life in and out of mental hospitals
and nursing homes.
It was Mary’s
responsibility to provide for the family. When
Doyle decided to enter medical school to
become a surgeon, he started writing short
stories anonymously to make some extra
money.
While Doyle was enrolled in medical
http://www.classic-literature.co.uk/scottish-authors/arthur-conan-doyle/
school at Edinburgh University, he met Dr.
Joseph Bell, the man who is said to be the
model for Sherlock Holmes. Holmes used the
same reasoning skills in crime solving that Bell
used in medicine, such as deducing a man’s
occupation by the appearance of his clothing
and his physical characteristics. As he got to
know Dr. Bell, Doyle became increasingly
fascinated with his cleverness. After leaving
medical school and taking a job as a ship’s
doctor, Doyle continued his writing and the
character of Sherlock Holmes started to take
hold in his mind.
Doyle’s stories were not immediately
popular. One publisher called his first Sherlock
Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, “cheap
fiction.”
Doyle agreed. He didn’t enjoy writing
the detective stories; in fact, he thought it was
a waste of precious time that could be spent
writing more serious literature. In 1887, the
novel was published in England. In 1890,
Americans got their first taste of the Holmes
and Watson detective duo. After reading the
story, the public wanted more and more.
However, Doyle didn’t want to provide
it. By this time, he had decided to trade his
surgeon’s tools for a pen—permanently. With
plenty of time to devote to his art, Doyle
thought, he could put Holmes aside and
concentrate on writing in the more important
genres of literature. Deciding to spend his time
writing “was one of the great moments of
exultation in my life,” he wrote.
The clever detective, however, never
disappeared. Sherlock Holmes appeared in 13
short stories and four novels in all. Even when
Doyle tried to kill Holmes in a plunge off a cliff
in The Final Problem, publishers paid Doyle
huge sums of money to bring him back in
stories that take place before Holmes’s death.
Late in his career, Doyle said of Holmes, “I
have had such an overdose of him that I feel
towards him as I do towards pate de foie gras,
of which I once ate too much, so that the name
of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.”
Sherlock Holmes has become one of the
most beloved characters in all of literature.
Today, there is a Sherlock Holmes Society in
almost every country in the world. Doyle’s
stories and novels are even used as textbooks
to train detectives. What would Sherlock
Holmes have to say about that? “Elementary!”
of course.
Part II—Questions
1. What is the full name of the author of the
Sherlock Holmes mysteries?
2. What is the full name of Sherlock Holmes’
sidekick?
3. What word does Sherlock Holmes often
utter?
4. What were the first names of Doyle’s
parents?
5. Where did Doyle attend medical school?
6. On what man is the character of Sherlock
Holmes said to be based?
7. What was Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes
novel?
8. In which novel does Sherlock Holmes die?
9. Why did Doyle decide to bring back Sherlock
Holmes after he had killed him off?
10. In how many short stories does Sherlock
Holmes appear?
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