1859 - Arthur Conan Doyle is born on May 22 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second child and eldest son of ten children that will be born to Charles and Mary Foley Doyle. Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection and Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities are published
1868 - Arthur attends school with the Jesuits in England; later he will reject Catholicism.
1871 - Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass is published. The first book of George Eliot's Middlemarch is published. Royal Albert Hall, one of Britain's most important concert venues, opens in London.
1876 - Arthur enrolls in the University of Edinburgh Medical School. As a student, he takes various jobs to help his family, including serving as a ship's doctor on an arctic voyage. While at Edinburgh, he meets Dr. Joseph Bell, whose analytical capabilities amaze his patients and students; Bell later becomes a model for Sherlock Holmes.
1879 - "The Mystery of Sasassa Valley," Conan Doyle's first story, is published in Chambers's Journal, an Edinburgh Weekly.
1881 - Arthur receives his Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery qualifications, and takes a position as ship's doctor on a steamer en route to West Africa.
1882 - He returns to Great Britain and establishes his medical practice.
1885 - Conan Doyle receives his MD degree. He marries Louise Hawkins; her poor health makes the marriage a difficult one.
1887 - A Study in Scarlet, the debut Sherlock Holmes story, is published in Beaton's Christmas Annual.
1889 - Conan Doyle's short novel The Mystery of Cloomber, which is concerned with the paranormal, is published, as is Micah Clarke, a popular novel about the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685.
1890 - The second Holmes novel, The Sign of Four, is published in February in the Lippincott's Monthly Magazine and in October as a book. The story had been commissioned at the same dinner party at which Oscar Wilde was offered a contract for The Picture of Dorian Gray, also published in Lippincott's this year.
1891 - The White Company, a tale of 14th century chivalry, is published. Conan Doyle closes his medical practice to devote more time to his writing career. Stories featuring Sherlock Holmes begin to appear regularly in The Strand Magazine.
1892 - The story collection Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is published.
1893 - The year proves stressful, as the author's father dies and his wife is diagnosed with tuberculosis. Hoping to help Louise's condition, the family travels to Switzerland, where Conan Doyle visits Reichenbach Falls, the site he chooses for the setting of a crucial scene in "The Final Problem"; he intends for this to be the last Holmes story so that he can turn to literary work he considers more important. He joins the British Society for Psychical Research.
1894 - The story collection Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is published. Round the Red Lamp, a collection of medical short stories, is published. Conan Doyle makes a three month speaking tour of the United States (with one stop in Toronto), traveling in the east as far south as Washington DC, and in the Midwest as far as Chicago; it was his first personal discovery of America.
1895 - The Stark Munro Letters, a fictionalized autobiography, is published.
1896 - The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, about a hero in the Napoleonic wars, is published.
1897 - Conan Doyle meets Jean Leckie and falls in love with her; the two maintain a platonic relationship until their marriage in 1907. Bram Stoker's Dracula is published.
1900 - Arthur travels to South Africa to serve as a hospital doctor in the Boer War; he publishes The Great Boer War, an account of that conflict. Oscar Wilde dies.
1901 - Queen Victoria dies.
1902 - The Hound of the Baskervilles, a Holmes novel set before "The Final Problem" (1893), is published. Conan Doyle's work in the field hospital and his treatise on the Boer War, The War in South Africa: It's Cause and Conduct, earn him a knighthood.
1903 - New Holmes stories begin to appear in the Strand Magazine.
1905 - The story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes is published.
1906 - Louise died of tuberculosis at age 49. Conan Doyle begins investigations that will exonerate George Edalji, a man who had been wrongfully accused and sent to jail. Sir Nigel, a companion piece to The White Company (1891), is published.
1907 - Conan Doyle marries Jean Leckie. Through the Magic Door, about the importance of books in his life, is published.
1909 - The Crime of the Congo, about Belgian atrocities in the Congo, is published.
1910 - Arthur investigates the case of Oscar Slater, another wrongfully accused man. EM Forster's Howards End is published.
1912 - The Lost World is published; the first of a series of science fiction novels featuring the skeptical Professor George Edward Challenger, it is the best known of the authors non-Holmes stories.
1913 - The second Challenger novel, The Poison Belt, is published.
1914 - Conan Doyle visit New York City and Canada. World War I begins. James Joyce's Dubliners is published.
1915 - The final Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, is published.
1916 - Conan Doyle announces his belief in spiritualism, which holds that the spirit has a life after the death of the body; he will become one of its best known advocates. James Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published.
1917 - The Holmes story collection His Last Bow is published.
1918 - The author's oldest son, Kingsley, dies from war wounds and influenza. World War I ends. Conan Doyle publishes The New Revelation, his first book on spiritualism. Gerard Manley Hopkins's Poems is published.
1919 - Conan Doyle's brother, Innes, died from pneumonia. Another book on spiritualism, The Vital Message, is published.
1920 - From this year until his death, the author acts as an advocate for spiritualism.
1921 - Conan Doyle's mother, Mary, dies. Jean experiments with automatic writing.
1922 - Conan Doyle tours America in support of spiritualism. TS Eliot's The Wasteland and James Joyce's Ulysses are published.
1924 - Conan Doyle's autobiography, Memories and Adventures, is published.
1926 - The last Challenger novel, The Land of Mist, is published, as is Conan Doyle's two-volume History of Spiritualism.
1927 - The final Holmes story collection, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, is published. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is published.
1930 - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dies on July 7 at his home in Sussex from an illness resulting from a heart attack.
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A Research Compilation for Spy and Crime Novels
No FicciónA compilation of some research I did and articles I found, as well as misc. information I gathered to support me when I started writing my Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, but this information can be used however you'd like. Feel free to use this as a re...
