Sir Conan Doyle's Career

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Sir Conan Doyle's Career is an article published in The Telegraph (Brisbane) on 9 november 1907.


Editions


Sir Conan Doyle's Career

The Telegraph (Brisbane) (9 november 1907, p. 17)

INTERESTING CONFESSIONS.

In the "New York World" has recently appeared a long and readable interview with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from the pen of Mr Bram Stoker.

"My real love for letters, my instinct for story-telling, springs, I believe, from my mother, who is of Anglo-Celtic stock, with the glamour and romance of the Celt very strongly marked," remarked the novelist.

"It is not only that she was — is still — a wonderful story-teller, but she had, I remember, the art of sinking her voice to a horror-stricken whisper when she came to the crisis in her narrative, which makes me goose-fleshy now when I think of it. I am sure, looking back, that it was in attempting to emulate these stories of my childhood that I first began weaving dreams myself.

"When I was six I wrote a book of adventure — doubtless my mother has it yet. I illustrated it myself. It must be an absurd production, but still it showed the set of my mind.

TOLD TALES AT SCHOOL.

"When I went to school I carried the characteristic with me. There I was in some demand as a story-teller. The only scholastic success I can ever remember lay in the direction of English essays and poetry. I was no good at either classics or mathematics; even my English I wrote as pleasure, not as work.

"In 1876 I drifted into the study of medicine. The reason largely was that my people lived in Edinburgh, and there was a famous medical school there.

"For four years I went through the curriculum. My people were not at that time wealthy, and it was a struggle to keep me at college. So I compressed my classes into the winter, and devoted each summer to serving as a medical assistant, and so earning a little money to help to pay the fees.

"I served in this way in Sheffield, in the country districts of Shropshire, and finally in Birmingham — a billet to which I returned three times.

"When I was nearly twenty-one a friend of mine, who had been surgeon to a whaler in the Arctic seas, told’ me that he was unable to return that summer, and offered me the billet. I was away for seven months in the Greenland Ocean. I came of age in 80 degrees. north latitude.

"On returning home from the Arctic I took my degree, having been thrown back one year by the fact of going north. I was twenty-two when I qualified, and, thanks to my numerous assistantships, had a very varied experience behind me.

HE BEGAN TO WRITE.

"After starting in practice I had much — too much — time on my hands; and then I began to write voluminously.

"I suppose that during those early years I wrote not less than fifty short stories. The first appeared in 1878, while I was still a student. It was in 'Chambers's Journal,' and was called 'The Mystery of Sassassa Valley.' I had three guineas for it.

"For ten years I wrote short stories; roughly from 1877 to 1887. During that time I do not think that lever earned £50 in any year by my pen, though I worked incessantly.

"Finally, in 1887 I wrote 'A Study in Scarlet,' the first book which introduced Sherlock Holmes.

"I don't know how I got that name. I was looking the other day at a bit of paper on which I had scribbled 'Sherringford Holmes,' and 'Sherrington Hope,' and all sorts of other combinations. Finally at the bottom of the paper I had written 'Sherlock Holmes.' 'A Study in Scarlet' appeared in a Christmas number of 'Beeton's Annual.'

"My next book was 'Micah Clarke,' an historical novel. This met with a good reception from the critics and the public; and from that time onward I had no further difficulty in disposing of my manuscripts."




Retrieved from "https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Sir_Conan_Doyle%27s_Career&oldid=126487"