Charles Foley
From AwardAnnals
Information about the author.
Works
- 1 work
- Show titles only
Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, Charles Foley
- 2008 Anthony-Critical winner
- 2008 Edgar-Critical/Biography winner
- 2007 Agatha–Nonfiction winner
- 2008 Macavity-Nonfiction nominee
- Score: 36.58
This remarkable annotated collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s previously unpublished private correspondence offers unique insight into one of the world’s most popular authors. For the first time, Conan Doyle emerges from the shadow of Sherlock Holmes, revealing a man whose character and exploits rival that of his famous creation. In particular, Conan Doyle’s correspondence with his mother exposes his endless search for fulfillment and success outside the Holmes stories.
At age sixteen Conan Doyle began studying medicine at Edinburgh University. Just months shy of graduating, he made the adventurous decision to accept a position as a surgeon on a whaling ship heading to the Arctic. He returned to Edinburgh, graduated, and struggled to establish his own medical practice while simultaneously writing and promoting his stories. He suffered years of disappointment as both doctor and author; yet, to his amazement, just two months after the first Sherlock Holmes short stories, he had garnered such a following that he completely abandoned medicine for literature.
As the public clamored…
