TCDE-Team at 23:50, 27 February 2026

2026-02-27T23:50:13Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:50, 28 February 2026
Line 23:		Line 23:

	'''Reviewed by Christopher Redmond'''		'''Reviewed by Christopher Redmond'''


	'''A definitive biography is still to be written'''		'''A definitive biography is still to be written'''

TCDE-Team at 16:49, 27 February 2026

2026-02-27T16:49:15Z

Show changes

TCDE-Team at 16:44, 27 February 2026

2026-02-27T16:44:05Z

Show changes

TCDE-Team: Created page with "{{Cargo_Reviews_Articles |Date=1995-01-01 |Book=Conan Doyle |BookAuthor=Michael Coren |Reviewer=Christopher Redmond |Topics=Biography }} This review of the biography ''"Conan Doyle", by Michael Coren'' was written by Christopher Redmond and collected in the article "The Quest Continues: Five Reviewers in search of a Biography" in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 6, 1995). == Review == File:Acd-society-journal-1995-vol6-p30..."

2026-02-27T16:37:27Z

Created page with "{{Cargo_Reviews_Articles |Date=1995-01-01 |Book=Conan Doyle |BookAuthor=Michael Coren |Reviewer=Christopher Redmond |Topics=Biography }} This review of the biography ''"Conan Doyle", by Michael Coren'' was written by Christopher Redmond and collected in the article "The Quest Continues: Five Reviewers in search of a Biography" in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 6, 1995). == Review == File:Acd-society-journal-1995-vol6-p30..."

New page

{{Cargo_Reviews_Articles
|Date=1995-01-01
|Book=Conan Doyle
|BookAuthor=Michael Coren
|Reviewer=Christopher Redmond
|Topics=Biography
}}
This review of the biography ''"Conan Doyle", by Michael Coren'' was written by [[Christopher Redmond]] and collected in the article "The Quest Continues: Five Reviewers in search of a Biography" in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 6, 1995).

== Review ==
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1995-vol6-p30-the-quest-continues2.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 6, 1995, p. 30)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1995-vol6-p31-the-quest-continues.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 6, 1995, p. 31)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1995-vol6-p32-the-quest-continues.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 6, 1995, p. 32)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1995-vol6-p33-the-quest-continues.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 6, 1995, p. 33)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1995-vol6-p34-the-quest-continues.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 6, 1995, p. 34)]]

: [[File:Bloomsbury-1995-arthur-conan-doyle-coren.jpg|100px]]
: '''Conan Doyle'''
: by Michael Coren
: Bloomsbury; 1995; 213pp; £18.99; ISBN: 0-7475-2192-1

'''Reviewed by Christopher Redmond'''

'''A definitive biography is still to be written'''

The world needs a definitive biography of Arthur Conan Doyle. The measure of how badly that need is felt is the continuing value of John Dickson Carr's The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published more than forty years ago, still intermittently in print and still as useful a source as can be found both for the broad outline of ACD's life and, frequently, for the facts and details that fill in the outline. But Carr's book, welcomed as definitive when it first appeared, is nothing of the kind, and neither are any of its successors. It has been argued that, faute de mieux, Jon Lellenberg's collection The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is now the best available single book (and not only is it still in print, it probably will be in print forever, demand for the original edition from Southern Illinois University being regrettably less than brisk).

When it was made known that Michael Coren, biographer of ACD's contemporaries H. G. Wells and G. K. Chesterton, was embarking on a biography of ACD, the expectation naturally was that he would write the definitive book for which every Doylean longed. The apprehensions were not about his comprehensive- ness, or his ability to find and digest a mass of information, or his skill in bringing a man to life in words. The apprehensions were about his possible biases, prejudices, opinions, emphases.

Which just goes to show how wrong expectations can be. There is nothing much wrong with the emphasis and proportion in Coren's long-awaited Conan Doyle (why, first of all, could he or his publisher not have found a more original and memorable title?), but many other things are wrong with it, things that disappoint and annoy and cumulate until the reader's verdict must be that the new book is of very little value. Indeed, it is not even very new; this biography is about equivalent to Ronald Pearsall's 1977 volume of the same title, though weighted down with far fewer facts. It does present its subject with sympathy, rather than with the disdain apparent in Pearsall, but it is certainly not the definitive biography that was anticipated.

To begin with, it is a slight book, some 200 pages long, with three dozen footnotes and a slapdash bibliography. Only books are listed, and not all the books a biographer of ACD must needs consult; even the Green and Gibson Bibliography is not mentioned. Geoffrey Stavert's A Study in Southsea is overlooked, as well as Rodin and Key's Medical Casebook, and Harold Orel's Interviews and Recollec- tions, and two major books by the present reviewer. It rather appears that Coren-who is patronizing at several spots in his book about most of the followers of ACD and Sherlock Holmes-decided early that, as he writes, many books on those subjects are best left alone', and made no effort to open them. As for periodical scholarship about ACD, Coren cites none (and there is much of it, including the publications of the Arthur Conan Doyle Society). He lists Gibson and Green's Letters to the Press as though it were a book about ACD; in fact it is a collection of ACD's own writing, and one suspects that Coren relied heavily on it rather than referring to original serial publications.

One wonders, over and over again: on what, in fact, did Coren rely in writing his narrative? He states that in 1928 and 1929 ACD was concerned about German rearmament, and one would not care to doubt the statement, but surely published or unpublished writings should be cited to prove it. He says that before their marriage ACD and Jean Leckie spoke of what it would be like to sleep together and wake up together; how does he know? What exactly is the evidence that ACD read Gibbon in his rented house in Southsea?

The most striking feature of the book, however, is not so much the absence of documentation as the absence of facts that might need documenting. In a biography that is to be of any use, one wants the names of individuals (including the identities of some who were concealed by pseudonyms in ACD's own writing), the specifics of places. One wants dates. Surely it would have cost little to mention the dates when ACD's children were born, and the precise dates of some of his lectures and travels. Some dates are casily obtainable if not already in print, and either carelessness or arrogance must be the reason they are omitted from a biography to which they would have added considerable artistic verisimilitude.

But Coren rivals Carr, forty years earlier, for vagueness on the chronological score. One marvels at the sequence of events in his final pages, which appear to jump from the spring of 1930 to November of 1929 before arriving at ACD's death in July 1930. It is even more disconcerting to the reader than the passage about ACD's anticipation of the Great War, in which Coren is more than a page into the war itself before the reader is able to realize that the fighting has begun. The page in which he hops from Shoscombe Old Place' to 'The Retired Colourman' and back again is equally confusing

One must suspect carelessness, for it is not difficult to identify unnecessary mistakes throughout the book. Some are presumably no more than typographical errors (let us not assume that so literate a man as Michael Coren cannot spell the name of Edgar Allan Poe correctly), while others betray haste or lack of interest: Miss Mortan twice for Mary Morstan of The Sign of the Four, 'Major Bartholomew Sholto from the same work, Bush Villa' for ACD's home in Southsea. That solecism is clearly borrowed-as is too much else throughout the volume from ACD's own careless autobiography, Memories and Adventures. It was in fact No. 1 Bush Villas, plural, as Geoffrey Stavert has documented.

There are curious omissions and elisions, as though Coren was writing in great haste with no opportunity for revision. He omits the first name of ACD's first serious lady-love, Elmo Weldon, though it is well known. He speaks of 'the Waller estate' on page 24 without having introduced Bryan Charles Waller, a figure of considerable importance to ACD's youth. He never properly explains Lily Loder-Symonds, a figure of almost equal importance in his late middle age (and she is bizarrely identified as 'Lilly Lodersons' in the caption to one of the photographs). He apparently never mentions ACD's friend Robert Barr (an omission all the odder because several times Coren, a Briton now living in Canada, goes out of his way to emphasize Canadian connections to ACD when he can find them). He quotes the last sentence of The White Company, a passage that can legitimately be considered of some importance in illustrating the development of ACD's thought and literary achievement, and gets the punctuation wrong.

One must expect the occasional little mistake in any book of substance, and so can chuckle. rather than sputter with outrage, at the chained cormorant' (for 'trained cormorant. from 'The Veiled Lodger'). But one becomes more concerned when statements that are almost certainly not true are presented as such, and without evidence. On his 1894 trip to America. ACD visited Niagara Falls before going to Toronto, not afterwards, and he made no remark there comparing Niagara with Reichenbach. Any such comment was made to Lady Conan Doyle on a later visit, if it was ever made at all.

Among the books to which Coren does not refer is Samuel Rosenberg's outrageous Naked is the Best Disguise, on the strength of which its author called himself the first to walk on the Doylean moon'. Perhaps its absurdities disqualified it from attention in Coren's mind, and yet it did raise matters of sex, blood and darkness that are important to an understanding of ACD's writing and his mind. Here and there Coren does lightly acknowledge the presence of such themes in ACD's fiction, particularly in 'The Illustrious Client' and 'The Three Gables. But he does not address the curious incident of the suppression of 'The Cardboard Box'; and remarkably, he never mentions The Parasite, a work that must be explained as part of any fully satisfactory discussion of ACD

But then many others of ACD's works are omitted as well, including Round the Red Lamp (how can one assess the writings of a medical man without attention his medical stories?). Beyond the City (so important for an understanding of his feminism) and The Refugees Coren takes the reader through ACD's life at high speed, omitting much, and gives a clear sense that he himself wrote at high speed, neither taking the time to include everything nor going back to check the details.

If there is one thing that a reader might expect from the precious and elegant Michael Coren, it is good writing, reaching sometimes to artistic heights. In this respect as well, Conan Doyle disappoints. The few grammatical errors may be put down to haste and misfortune, but long sequences of sentences that show no sign of the editor's pen are less forgivable. The writing in this book has neither Oscar Wilde's grace nor Arthur Conan Doyle's simple craftsmanship.

It may appear from this cascade of criticisms that there is nothing good or accurate or new in Coren's book, and that is not entirely the case. What is good is that it tells the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for a generation that does not know him well, sympathetically and with context. Lacking detail as it does, it certainly runs no risk of slowing the reader down. What is accurate is its general picture of ACD, the balance among his many facets as medical man, family man, writer, public figure and preacher. It would be fair to add that this biography treats ACD's Spiritualist years more kindly and more helpfully than most previous books have done; Coren does not apologize for his subject's beliefs, and he brings forward the important understanding, lacking in most writing about ACD, that his Spiritualist thought had roots as early as the 1880s, rather than being an eccentric result of the trauma of the War.

What is new is, chiefly, a number of illuminating details drawn from letters of ACD that Coren has seen as a result of his previous biographical research. G. K. Chesterton, one of Coren's earlier subjects, appears over and over in this text, rather startlingly to readers who have never considered Chesterton an important figure in ACD's life. The innovation is justified by. for example, the passage in which ACD admits to Chesterton that he once bought two suits, identical except for size, to help him conceal the weight he was unfortunately gaining. The revelation of ACD's progressive deafness in his later years must be from some similar source-Coren, who apparently dislikes footnotes, gives no reference.

Also new is an apparently keen interest in ACD's attitude to Jews and Zionism. Coren has uncovered a fascinating letter from ACD to Isracl Zangwill, an important figure in the history of Zionism, showing a sympathetic if somewhat impractical interest in the plight of European Jews; there is also a brief reference to a remarkable incident in which ACD helped a Jewish family escape from Europe to England in 1929. There has long been a faint suspicion (which Coren may have shared as he began his investigations) that ACD was no less anti-Semitic than his contemporaries: one or two references in the Sherlock Holmes tales can be cited in support of that allegation. Coren ignores those and implicitly comes to a much more complimentary conclusion.

So there are some things of interest in Coren's Conan Doyle, and yet it is profoundly disappointing. a book that will be little used nor long remembered. When Coren spoke in 1994 at the Arthur Conan Doyle Society's convention in Toronto. someone asked him to sum up in a phrase or a sentence what he thought of ACD at that stage of his work. He did not hesitate. 'The best of Empire,' he shot back. It is a phrase that does not appear in the present book, and an idea not sufficiently explored. Too bad: it would make a fine title for a biography of ACD, perhaps even a definitive biography. But such a book is still to be written.

{{footer_acd_society_article}}
{{footer_periodicals}}
{{footer_review_articles}}

Review:Conan Doyle (Coren's Biography)/Christopher Redmond - Revision history

TCDE-Team at 23:50, 27 February 2026

TCDE-Team at 16:49, 27 February 2026

TCDE-Team at 16:44, 27 February 2026