Few writers have created such an illusion of reality as did Arthur Conan Doyle in Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson. So convincing is the tall, hawk-faced sleuth with his deer hunter's cap and briar pipe, scholars still argue that he must have been a real person.  Whatever the controversy, Arthur Conan Doyle was indeed a very real and very active man—athlete, doctor, politician, war correspondent, champion of lost causes—whose career was as fascinating as any fiction.

He was involved in nearly every major event that occurred in his long life (1859-1930), and his own adventures, his interest in scientific detection, plus a very fertile imagination, all found their way into his stories about Sherlock Holmes.

It was the great irony of Conan Doyle's life that he was so closely associated with his detective hero. Though Holmes brought him fame and fortune, though a vast public eagerly awaited each Holmes story and police departments copied Holmes's methods, Conan Doyle's ambitions went far beyond the character he had invented while a struggling young doctor. As a writer, he wished to be remembered for such historical novels as The White Company and Micah Clarke, brilliant models of their kind. In vain he had Holmes seemingly killed in The Final Problem, but world-wide protest forced him to resurrect the great detective.

Energetic, courageous and gifted with a singular brand of genius, Arthur Conan Doyle amassed a long list of achievements, including being knighted for his distinguished service as a doctor in the Boer War. Sherlock Holmes remains the figure by which we know him, but it can be safely said that Conan Doyle's own life was his greatest creation.

From the book