Best known for his mystery stories starring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote dozens of horror stories, including his first published tales.
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Arthur’s father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was a chronic alcoholic. Arthur’s mother, Mary Foley, was an educated woman who had a passion for books and loved to tell stories. The Doyle family life was one of financial insecurity and turbulence due to Charles’s drinking, but Arthur found solace in his mother and enjoyed the stories she told.
The wealthy members of the Doyle family offered to pay for Arthur’s schooling, so at the age of nine, he was packed off to a Jesuit boarding school in England. During the grueling years of his studies, he found comfort in the letters he wrote to his mother. He discovered that he had inherited his mother’s talent for storytelling, and he often found himself surrounded by a mob of younger students who hung on every word of the stories he made up.
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