Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While studying, he also began writing short stories; his first published story appeared in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20.His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modeled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell.

Future short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the English Strand Magazine. Interestingly, Rudyard Kipling congratulated Conan Doyle on his success, asking "Could this be my old friend, Dr. Joe?" Sherlock Holmes, however, was even more closely modelled after the famous Edgar Allan Poe character, C. Auguste Dupin.Holmes and Moriarty apparently plunged to their deaths together down a waterfall in the story, "The Final Problem". Public outcry led him to bring the character back; Conan Doyle returned to the story in "The Adventure of the Empty House", with the explanation that only Moriarty had fallen but, since Holmes had other dangerous enemies, he had arranged to be temporarily "dead" also. Holmes ultimately appears in a total of 56 short stories and four Conan Doyle novels (he has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors).

Following the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century and the condemnation from around the world over the United Kingdom's conduct, Conan Doyle wrote a short pamphlet titled, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which justified the UK's role in the Boer war, and was widely translated. Conan Doyle believed that it was this pamphlet that resulted in 1902 in his being knighted and appointed Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. He also in 1900 wrote the longer book, The Great Boer War.

Holmes books
Main article: Canon of Sherlock Holmes

* A Study in Scarlet (1887)
* The Sign of Four (1890)
* The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
* The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
* The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
* The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1904)
* The Valley of Fear (1914)
* His Last Bow (1917)
* The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

Challenger stories

* The Lost World (1912)[11]
* The Poison Belt (1913)[11]
* The Land of Mist (1926)[11]
* The Disintegration Machine (1927)
* When the World Screamed (1928)

Historical novels

* Micah Clarke (1888)
* The White Company (1891)
* The Great Shadow (1892)
* The Refugees (publ. 1893, written 1892)
* Rodney Stone (1896)
* Uncle Bernac (1897)
* Sir Nigel (1906)
* The British Campaign in France and Flanders: 1914 (1916)