The creator of Sherlock Holmes, one of the few internationally recognizable fictional characters, was by descent Irish, by birth Scottish, and by conduct a model British gentleman. Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on 22 May 1859 into a Roman Catholic family whose cultural distinction was offset by its relative poverty. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was the youngest surviving son of the famous political caricaturist John Doyle and brother to Punch cartoonist Richard (Dicky) Doyle. An artist of some ability himself, Charles Doyle was sent instead to earn his living as a civil servant in Edinburgh, where he met and married Mary Foley, the well-educated daughter of an Irish doctor whose early death had forced …
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Citation: Jann, Rosemary. "Arthur Conan Doyle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 January 2008; last revised 17 June 2019. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1308, accessed 23 November 2024.]
