At the age of seven Arthur began his education at Newington Academy in Edinburgh. Then thanks to his mother and the financial help of his uncles, particularly, Michael Conan, a Paris correspondent for the Art Journal, Arthur received good education. First, he was sent for a year to Hodder, a prep school which prepared for a prestigious Jesuit school, Stonyhurst College, in Lancashire, which Arthur started in autumn 1870.

Arthur did not like the strict discipline and excessive religious instruction which the Jesuits had imposed on pupils. He was soon disillusioned with the Christian faith and when he was leaving the school he became almost an agnostic. While at Stonyhurst College, Arthur edited a school paper called Wasp and next the Stonyhurst Figaro, in which he revealed his talent as a future story writer. He also became a keen sportsman. In his later life he played cricket, rugby, football and golf, and was a cross-country skier.

After passing the London Matriculation Examination at Stonyhurst, Arthur spent a year in a Jesuit grammar school, Stella Matutina, in Feldkirch, Austria, where he was to learn German. He did not speak much German because he was surrounded by other English boys, but he discovered the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, such as "The Gold Bug" and "The Murder in the Rue Morgue," which later exerted a great influence on his detective fiction. At Feldkirch he also edited a student paper, the Feldkirch Gazette, which carried the motto "Fear not, and put it in print. ” However, when he wrote an editorial criticising the Jesuit teachers' custom of censoring the boys' letters, the paper was shut down. Arthur's uncle, Michael Conan, a famous journalist, encouraged him to write, but he did not take this idea seriously at that time. (Pascal 18)

As a young boy Arthur was an avid reader, and one of his most favourite books was Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. His other early readings included the novels of Robert Michael Ballantyne, Mayne Reid, James Fenimore Cooper, and Jules Verne. He spent much of his spare time reading, and once he borrowed so many books from the local library that, as he recalls in Memories and Adventures, a special meeting of a library committee was held in his honour, at which a bye-law was passed that no subscriber should be permitted to change his book more than three times a day. (Pascal 13)

In 1876, Arthur Conan Doyle began to study medicine at his mother's suggestion at the University of Edinburgh, which had been one of the best medical schools at that time. He met Dr. Joseph Bell (1837-1911), the famous lecturer and an expert in the use of deductive reasoning, who inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes, and the physiologist, Professor William Rutherford (1839-1899), a model for Professor Challenger. He also studied under Sir Robert Christison (1797-1882), one of the founding fathers of modern toxicology. (Harris 449)

During his medical studies, Arthur desperately tried to earn money for his living and to support his family.1879, he worked as a medical assistant to Doctor Hoare in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham); next he worked in Sheffield and in Ruyton-XI-Towns, Shropshire. As a student he began writing short stories to earn some extra money. His earliest fiction, "The Haunted Grange of Goresthorphe," was rejected by Blackwood's Magazine, but The "Mystery of the Sasassa Valley” was accepted for publication by Chambers Journal. He also published a scientific article, "Gelseminum as a Poison” in the British Medical Journal.

In 1880, Conan Doyle took a break from his studies and went on a daring six-month sea voyage to the Arctic on the whaling ship Hope. All British whale ships had to carry a surgeon, even if he was a 20 year-old medical student. During the voyage Doyle wrote a fascinating diary which was published recently. This voyage inspired him to write the story, "The Captain of the Pole Star. ”

Finally, in 1881, Conan Doyle passed qualifying examinations and settled in the Portsmouth suburb of Southsea in the next year to begin his own medical practice. As a keen sportsman, he joined the Southsea Bowling Club and the North End Cricket Club, and started playing rugby. He also joined the Literary and Scientific Society. Soon he found out that he was not satisfied with his medical career and decided to try his hand in writing fiction. From a young age he found pleasure in writing letters and articles and, finally, composing short stories.

In Southsea, Doyle, aged 23, wrote articles and short stories for London Society, All the Year Round, Temple Bar,Lancet, and The British Journal of Photography. He also wrote his first novel, The Narrative of John Smith. Its manuscript was lost in the mail on its way to the publisher. Although not good fiction, the novel provides a fascinating insight into the young writer's mind. It was published in 2011.

This early novel is about a middle-aged man who is stricken with gout and confined to his bed for a week. He attempts to write a book, and expounds his views on topics such as medicine, religion, literature and interior design. Many of the opinions reflect the author's outlook, e. g. his belief in the importance of science and medicine, and his scepticism about religious dogma.

In the 1880s Conan Doyle continued his private medical practice at Southsea, which turned out to be far from prosperous, and published fiction in various magazines. In 1886, he wrote a novella, A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the character of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Because of its brevity it was not published as a separate book, but was included in Beeton's Christmas Annual in the following year. The Annual was not very popular and Doyle decided to write historical romances instead of detective fiction.

Conan Doyle often wrote to his mother about his longing to have a wife. Eventually, in 1885, he married Louise 'Toulie' Hawkins, whom he had met while treating her terminally ill brother Jack. Surprisingly, instead of going on a honeymoon with his young wife, he went on a tour of Ireland with the Stonyhurst Wanderers, the school's old boys cricket team. Four years later Arthur and Louise had their first child, Mary, and in 1892 their second child, Arthur, known as Kingsley.

In 1890, Conan Doyle studied briefly ophthalmology in Vienna. He then visited the Hygiene Institute in Berlin, where Robert Koch's cure for tuberculosis was being tested, and reported on the cure, first in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, and next in an article "Dr Koch and his Cure," published in the Review of the Reviews. Although he had some doubts about the curative properties of the new procedure, he was impressed by Koch himself as "a model of scientist as hero. ” (Kerr 84)

After return to England, Conan Doyle moved to London with his wife and daughter to start practice as an eye specialist at 2 Upper Wimpole Street. However, as he wrote in his Memories and Adventures, "not one single patient had entered the threshold of my room. ” (96) Having no patients he had plenty of time to reconsider his career, and eventually, he decided to undergo a significant metamorphosis from doctor to writer (Kerr 91). In August, Doyle decided to give up medicine and make his living as a full-time professional writer. He next moved with his family to Tennison Road in South Norwood to concentrate only on writing. He published the first six "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” in the Strand Magazine, and in 1890, the second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four, in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. When the stories were published in book form as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), "the Baker Street mania finally swept the public. By then Conan Doyle had launched himself as a full-time professional writer." (Dirda 12)

Life at Undershaw and Windlesham