The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II - By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Kyle Freeman Page 0,1

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 pub lished in Chambers’s Journal, an Edinburgh weekly.

1881 Conan Doyle 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 M.D. 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 Beeton’s Christmas Annual.

1889 Conan Doyle’s short novel The Mystery of Cloomber, which is con cerned 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 Feb ruary in 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 Do rian Gray, also published in Lippincott’s this year.

1891 The White Company, a tale of fourteenth-century chivalry, is pub lished. 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 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is pub lished.

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 Re ichenbach Falls, the site he chooses for the murder of Sherlock Holmes 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 Re search, which will provide the basis for his belief in spiritualism. The story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is published.

1894 Round the Red Lamp, a collection of medical short stories, is pub lished.

1895 The Stark Munro Letters, a fictionalized autobiography, is pub lished.

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 Conan Doyle 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 a field hospital and his treatise on the Boer War, The War in South Africa: Its 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 dies of tuberculosis at age forty-nine. 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 Conan Doyle investigates the case of Oscar Slater, another wrong fully accused man. E. M. 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 Chal lenger, it is the best known of the author’s non-Holmes stories.

1913 The second Challenger novel, The Poison Belt, is published.

1914 Conan Doyle visits New York City and Canada. World War I be gins. 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 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is published.

1917 The Holmes story collection His Last Bow is published.

1918 The author’s eldest son, Kingsley, dies from war wounds and