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Today is the 160th anniversary of ACD’s birthday, and I would like to commemorate it by a review of two books about his life.
The first one is Memories and Adventures, penned by ACD himself in 1924. When I started to write Holmes fic, I wanted to get some insight into ACD’s creative process and learn more about him to build headcanons about Watson (and Holmes too). Having come across ACD’s memoirs, I read them avidly. They are written in ACD’s signature style: clear, fun, and easy to read. His life was as adventurous as his short stories and novels, and his way of storytelling defined my view of Watson’s narrative. Something was embellished, something glossed over, and something omitted, but on the whole it was a candid account.
- For example, he is graphic and shockingly straightforward, writing about the severe corporal punishment he suffered as a boy at Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school he attended, and which made him cast off his Roman-Catholic faith.
- However, he glosses over the fact of his father’s alcoholism and how terribly it affected the Doyle family. Mary Doyle had to raise seven children single-handedly in poverty while caring after her incapable husband. But ACD writes of his father sympathetically and doesn’t go into detail regarding Charles Doyle’s affliction.
- He creates myths which mislead his readers and biographers, like his abandoning medicine because ‘not one single patient had ever crossed the threshold of my room’ when in fact he was exhausted by treating patients during daytime and writing at night and eventually had to choose.
- While giving quite a lot of details about his first marriage and children born in it, he is practically silent about his second wife whom he adored and his younger offspring whom he doted on.
He (and Watson) is a story-teller, so his recounting is better be taken with a grain of salt.
I found his youthful experiences especially relatable. One can see him as a real living person, interrupting his studies to work as a doctor’s apprentice, and later as a ship’s surgeon on an Arctic expedition which nearly cost him his life due to his own recklessness. His struggles while setting his first practice in a new town are familiar to many of us in the 21st century, when you’re perpetually broke and in a desperate need of a job which doesn’t come your way.
There’s a chapter about his torrid partnership with George Turnavine Budd, whom he doesn’t mention under the real name, referring to him as ‘Cullingworth’ (like in The Stark Munro Letters).
The latter part of the memoirs covering the period after he received recognition and fame was disappointing. The real man disappears; instead there’s a larger-than-life public figure and name-dropping, as if he deliberately retreats behind that veneer to protect his privacy.
Anyways, the book is definitely worth reading. Only there you can get advice on writing a Holmes story directly from the author himself:

The first one is Memories and Adventures, penned by ACD himself in 1924. When I started to write Holmes fic, I wanted to get some insight into ACD’s creative process and learn more about him to build headcanons about Watson (and Holmes too). Having come across ACD’s memoirs, I read them avidly. They are written in ACD’s signature style: clear, fun, and easy to read. His life was as adventurous as his short stories and novels, and his way of storytelling defined my view of Watson’s narrative. Something was embellished, something glossed over, and something omitted, but on the whole it was a candid account.
- For example, he is graphic and shockingly straightforward, writing about the severe corporal punishment he suffered as a boy at Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school he attended, and which made him cast off his Roman-Catholic faith.
- However, he glosses over the fact of his father’s alcoholism and how terribly it affected the Doyle family. Mary Doyle had to raise seven children single-handedly in poverty while caring after her incapable husband. But ACD writes of his father sympathetically and doesn’t go into detail regarding Charles Doyle’s affliction.
- He creates myths which mislead his readers and biographers, like his abandoning medicine because ‘not one single patient had ever crossed the threshold of my room’ when in fact he was exhausted by treating patients during daytime and writing at night and eventually had to choose.
- While giving quite a lot of details about his first marriage and children born in it, he is practically silent about his second wife whom he adored and his younger offspring whom he doted on.
He (and Watson) is a story-teller, so his recounting is better be taken with a grain of salt.
I found his youthful experiences especially relatable. One can see him as a real living person, interrupting his studies to work as a doctor’s apprentice, and later as a ship’s surgeon on an Arctic expedition which nearly cost him his life due to his own recklessness. His struggles while setting his first practice in a new town are familiar to many of us in the 21st century, when you’re perpetually broke and in a desperate need of a job which doesn’t come your way.
There’s a chapter about his torrid partnership with George Turnavine Budd, whom he doesn’t mention under the real name, referring to him as ‘Cullingworth’ (like in The Stark Munro Letters).
The latter part of the memoirs covering the period after he received recognition and fame was disappointing. The real man disappears; instead there’s a larger-than-life public figure and name-dropping, as if he deliberately retreats behind that veneer to protect his privacy.
Anyways, the book is definitely worth reading. Only there you can get advice on writing a Holmes story directly from the author himself:
People have often asked me whether I knew the end of a Holmes story before I started it. Of course I do. One could not possibly steer a course if one did not know one's destination. The first thing is to get your idea. Having got that key idea one's next task is to conceal it and lay emphasis upon everything which can make for a different explanation. Holmes, however, can see all the fallacies of the alternatives, and arrives more or less dramatically at the true solution by steps which he can describe and justify.

no subject
Date: 2019-05-22 07:33 pm (UTC)For this reason I headcanon that Watson said in STUD he had no relatives while in SIGN he reveals that he actually had a brother. (Although ACD must have just forgotten XD)
no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-22 08:23 pm (UTC)I feel like ACD's life also kind of puts in context all the random stuff that Watson casually throws out there about himself. Like, oh yes, when I was in Australia blah blah blah... experience with women on three continents, casual... meanwhile everyone is like "BUT WHEN? HOW?" but really... that was kind of how ACD's life was. He had gone a lot of places by quite a young age.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 06:52 am (UTC)Yes, ACD included much from his life into the Watsonian lore. Travelling broadens one’s horizons. As ACD wrote about the Arctic expedition, “I went on board the whaler a big, straggling youth, I came off it a powerful, well-grown man.”
no subject
Date: 2019-05-22 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-23 06:35 pm (UTC)