Review:Out of the Shadows/Doug Elliott
This short review was written by Doug Elliott and published in the Canadian Holmes (Vol. 28 No. 2, Winter 2004).
Doug Elliott praises Georgina Doyle's book Out of the Shadows for finally bringing Arthur Conan Doyle's first wife Louise and their children out of historical neglect, using family letters, diaries, and photographs to provide a detailed and thought-provoking portrait of Doyle's early family life and literary rise.
Out of the Shadows
Arthur Conan Doyle has been the subject of a wealth of biographies and one would have thought his life was well-covered by these many authors. One neglected aspect of Conan Doyle's life, as it turns out, has been the period of his first marriage: his relationship with his wife Louise, and his children, Mary and Kingsley; and how the relationship with these children changed following the death of their mother in 1906. This was a particularly fruitful period of Conan Doyle's life — the time when he was establishing himself as a major literary figure and when he produced much of his finest work.
Happily, with Out of the Shadows, Georgina Doyle is now able to enhance our understanding of Conan Doyle's background and early family life. Drawing on a storehouse of letters and diaries left by her husband, John Doyle, the son of Arthur's brother, Innes, she provides a detailed and thought-provoking account, illustrating it with more than seventy photographs from her own collection. This study does, indeed, brining Louise Conan Doyle and her children out of the shadows which have hidden them for far too long.
Doug Elliott MBt. BSI
- Article courtesy The Bootmakers of Toronto.
