Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

Rating:
Summary: Conan Doyle From the Outside
Review: Daniel Stashower's biography of Conan Doyle is well written, as one would expect from the author of the Houdini mysteries, but never profound. We are given the great man's public life without any deep examination of the inner man. The result is a rather straightforward narrative, interesting because Conan Doyle led a fascinating life, but with all the weight of a magazine profile. The complete absence of citations reinforces this impression, and there are no footnotes, although a comprehensive bibliography is included.

Rating:
Summary: An award winning author of an award winning book
Review: Daniel Stashower, recent recipient of both the Edgar Award and the Agatha Award is the hottest star in the detective writing fiction scene. His work on Doyle is first rate and this book will rock any Sherlock fan or any student of great writing. He understands his subject because the author is also a great fiction writer. His recent fictionalization of Houdini and his brother Theo come on par with Holmes and Watson. No doubt. in Stashower's first novel, Houdini and Holmes met. I heartily recommend this author and his subjects.

Rating:
Summary: Start Here When You Want to Read about Conan Doyle
Review: Poor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Acclaimed for his creation of the supremely rational, preternaturally observant detective Sherlock Holmes, he spent many years in later life mocked for his belief in spiritualism, which he considered the "successor to traditional religious thought." Brave, headstrong, and reckless, Doyle was one of England's most vociferous believers in spirits, mediums, ectoplasm, messages from beyond the grave--and even fairies. He was a tireless lecturer on several continents, writing a raft of books on the subject and donating the royalties to various spiritualist organizations. His zeal may have been admired in some quarters, but it was almost universally derided, and in the last ten years of his life, it lost him most of his friends. What happened?

Daniel Stashower's well-written and highly entertaining light portrait of Doyle's career gives some simple but compelling answers. Though Scottish, Doyle was raised a Catholic, but abandoned his faith for agnosticism very early on. Yet he apparently was a born believer, just waiting for a cause. His inventive and appealing Sherlock Holmes stories never struck him as particularly worthy or important and he longed to give the world something of value (he also tried his hand at plays and historical novels). And like many other British citizens during World War I, Doyle suffered heavy family losses and ached for connection with his personal dead.

As Stashower relates with a brisk pace and gentle humor, warm-hearted Doyle's life reads as a succession of fiery causes. A formidable propagandist, Doyle would use his gifts as a writer and lecturer as well as his ever-growing celebrity to raise money and the public's consciousness time and time again. He fought human rights abuses in the Belgian Congo, supported the Boer War, argued for heightened British military preparedness before World War I, supported reforms in British divorce law, and injected himself into famous criminal trials he thought had been unjust. But spiritualism was his ultimate "holy crusade." Stashower minces no words in describing how Doyle was willing to accept or explain away even the most obvious frauds. He was noble and pathetic at the same time and Stashower makes us understand and sympathize with him, though we never see very far into Doyle's personality or his relationships. This is very much a biography of the public man, but given the subject's profound investment in publicizing what he held dear, that focus is appropriate and deeply satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Start Here When You Want to Read about Conan Doyle
Review: Poor Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Acclaimed for his creation of the supremely rational, preternaturally observant detective Sherlock Holmes, he spent many years in later life mocked for his belief in spiritualism, which he considered the "successor to traditional religious thought." Brave, headstrong, and reckless, Doyle was one of England's most vociferous believers in spirits, mediums, ectoplasm, messages from beyond the grave--and even fairies. He was a tireless lecturer on several continents, writing a raft of books on the subject and donating the royalties to various spiritualist organizations. His zeal may have been admired in some quarters, but it was almost universally derided, and in the last ten years of his life, it lost him most of his friends. What happened?

Daniel Stashower's well-written and highly entertaining light portrait of Doyle's career gives some simple but compelling answers. Though Scottish, Doyle was raised a Catholic, but abandoned his faith for agnosticism very early on. Yet he apparently was a born believer, just waiting for a cause. His inventive and appealing Sherlock Holmes stories never struck him as particularly worthy or important and he longed to give the world something of value (he also tried his hand at plays and historical novels). And like many other British citizens during World War I, Doyle suffered heavy family losses and ached for connection with his personal dead.

As Stashower relates with a brisk pace and gentle humor, warm-hearted Doyle's life reads as a succession of fiery causes. A formidable propagandist, Doyle would use his gifts as a writer and lecturer as well as his ever-growing celebrity to raise money and the public's consciousness time and time again. He fought human rights abuses in the Belgian Congo, supported the Boer War, argued for heightened British military preparedness before World War I, supported reforms in British divorce law, and injected himself into famous criminal trials he thought had been unjust. But spiritualism was his ultimate "holy crusade." Stashower minces no words in describing how Doyle was willing to accept or explain away even the most obvious frauds. He was noble and pathetic at the same time and Stashower makes us understand and sympathize with him, though we never see very far into Doyle's personality or his relationships. This is very much a biography of the public man, but given the subject's profound investment in publicizing what he held dear, that focus is appropriate and deeply satisfying.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Biography
Review: Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle was a complex and honorable man. Toward the end of his life he embraced spiritualisim as he did everything else, wholeheartedly, and this led to many people dismissing him as a crackpot. However, as author Daniel Stashower pointst out, such was not the case. Conan-Doyle really believed in life after death. This belief filled the void in his life that was left when he renounced his belief in the Catholic Church. Daniel Stashower has written an even-handed fair biography of Conan-Doyle. The book is well researched and Conan-Doyle comes to life on these pages. Conan-Doyle, of course, is best known for creating Sherlock Holmes but as Stashower shows Conan-Doyle wrote many more works of fiction and non-fiction in his long career. If you want to have an idea of what made the man behind Sherlock Holmes tick then I recommend this book highly.

Rating:
Summary: The mostly unknown Doyle
Review: The author concentrated on Doyle the 'man' and 'spiritislist' more then just the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Even though i'm a 'Holmes' fan i grew to appreciate Doyle's other diverse talents. A enjoyable read...

Rating:
Summary: Conan Doyle Comes to Life...
Review: Years ago I read the biographies of Conan Doyle by John Dickson Carr and Charles Higham, and even tried to get beyond Sherlock Holmes by reading as much as I could of Conan Doyle's other fiction. Therefore I thought I knew something about Conan Doyle as a writer and as a person, but Stashower's fine book was still a revelation to me; it's not an exaggeration to say that I found new insights into Sir Arthur on nearly every page.

Stashower has done his research, but he is also unafraid to use Conan Doyle's semiautobiographical fiction, not to mention his poetry, to provide windows into the inner Sir Arthur that Sir Arthur's own autobiography carefully conceals.

Sir Arthur, of course, created a character that (along with Tarzan) is one of the immortal icons of adventure fiction, a character as popular today as he was when his short stories first hit the STRAND Magazine like a thunderbolt. One thing everyone knows about Conan Doyle is how deeply he resented the fame of Sherlock Holmes, but even here Stashower has some startling information to relate.

He is particularly good on the last couple of decades of Sir Arthur's life, when his seemingly mindless advocacy of even the most infantile and transparently fradulent aspects of Spiritualism, and his output of nearly a dozen unreadable religious tracts, left almost all of his readers convinced he had lost his mind. His endorsement of the authenticity of some photographs of fairies supposedly taken by two little girls (who had actually cut the tiny figures out of very familiar magazine ads for Fairy Soap!), and his calling in a psychic detective to "solve" the not-very-mysterious disappearance of novelist Agatha Christie, were the final straws for even his most tolerant fans.

On top of it all Sir Arthur was a terrible judge of the relative merits of his own fiction, and anyone who attempts to read his entire fictional output, as I did some years ago and as Stashower obviously has, will see how sadly he frittered away and squandered his unique gifts as a "teller of tales."

How could a man who created one of the immortal icons of rationality be in person so gullible, irrational, foolish and unworldly? Well, Stashower does as good a job of explaining the apparent paradox as anyone will probably be able to do. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Conan Doyle Comes to Life...
Review: Years ago I read the biographies of Conan Doyle by John Dickson Carr and Charles Higham, and even tried to get beyond Sherlock Holmes by reading as much as I could of Conan Doyle's other fiction. Therefore I thought I knew something about Conan Doyle as a writer and as a person, but Stashower's fine book was still a revelation to me; it's not an exaggeration to say that I found new insights into Sir Arthur on nearly every page.

Stashower has done his research, but he is also unafraid to use Conan Doyle's semiautobiographical fiction, not to mention his poetry, to provide windows into the inner Sir Arthur that Sir Arthur's own autobiography carefully conceals.

Sir Arthur, of course, created a character that (along with Tarzan) is one of the immortal icons of adventure fiction, a character as popular today as he was when his short stories first hit the STRAND Magazine like a thunderbolt. One thing everyone knows about Conan Doyle is how deeply he resented the fame of Sherlock Holmes, but even here Stashower has some startling information to relate.

He is particularly good on the last couple of decades of Sir Arthur's life, when his seemingly mindless advocacy of even the most infantile and transparently fradulent aspects of Spiritualism, and his output of nearly a dozen unreadable religious tracts, left almost all of his readers convinced he had lost his mind. His endorsement of the authenticity of some photographs of fairies supposedly taken by two little girls (who had actually cut the tiny figures out of very familiar magazine ads for Fairy Soap!), and his calling in a psychic detective to "solve" the not-very-mysterious disappearance of novelist Agatha Christie, were the final straws for even his most tolerant fans.

On top of it all Sir Arthur was a terrible judge of the relative merits of his own fiction, and anyone who attempts to read his entire fictional output, as I did some years ago and as Stashower obviously has, will see how sadly he frittered away and squandered his unique gifts as a "teller of tales."

How could a man who created one of the immortal icons of rationality be in person so gullible, irrational, foolish and unworldly? Well, Stashower does as good a job of explaining the apparent paradox as anyone will probably be able to do. Highly recommended.