His Last Bow

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University and encountered a professor who became his model for the character of Sherlock Holmes; Joseph Bell taught his students the importance of close observation and displayed amazing powers of deduction on very little evidence. After two voyages as a ship's doctor, Conan Doyle set up a medical practice in Southsea, Hampshire. The practice struggled for five or six years and so did Conan Doyle's finances. As his writing career progressed, Conan Doyle increasingly turned towards short stories. Many of these first appeared in The Strand magazine, one of the most popular British literary magazines of the age that saw contributions from writers as varied as H. G. Wells, Agatha Christie and P. G. Wodehouse. The first two series of stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in The Strand between 1891 and 1893 and subsequently collected into two volumes entitled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. As fascinating as Holmes was, almost as important a character was his faithful companion Dr John Watson. Watson is both participant and narrator in these stories and his relationship with the solitary detective humanises the brilliant detective. Watson is an intelligent gentleman, with a keen eye and a sharp intelligence, yet even he is often bemused by Holmes' deductions. The interplay between these two characters, as much as the joy of uncovering the mystery, is what makes Conan Doyle's stories so entertaining. His Last Bow takes us to the end of Sherlock Holmes' career. It examines Holmes's service in the First World War. The collection was first published in 1917 and contained seven stories, but later editions, including this one, contained one more story, "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box". The unwavering popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories lured Conan Doyle back to writing. Eventually, he returned to medicine in a field hospital during the Boer War (1899-1902) and received a knighthood in 1902. He died in Crowborough, Sussex on 7 July 1930. The Sherlock Holmes stories had a lasting influence. Several authors, including Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, and P. G. Wodehouse have all written Sherlock Holmes stories of their own. Conan Doyle's stories have been adapted several times for film, television, and even in video games. His classic detective stories set the stage for the golden age of detective fiction that began in the 1930s. While detective novels had begun to emerge in the 19th century, it took the success of Sherlock Holmes to encourage publishers to take a chance on new authors in the genre. Renowned authors such as Agatha Christie owed a great debt to Conan Doyle. In Sherlock Holmes, he created the world's most popular detective.