The Hound of the Baskervilles Study Guide

Arthur Conan Doyle was born into poverty and an alcoholic father with a history of psychiatric illness. With help from members of his extended family, however, Doyle was able to achieve an excellent education and eventually earned a doctorate in medicine. He would practice medicine in various forms for much of his early adult life. While in medical school, Doyle took up writing as a hobby. By 1886, he had created the character of Sherlock Holmes. The character was a great success with the public, and Doyle soon found himself a wealthy man. However, he felt that Holmes had backed him into a corner, making it impossible for him to write on other topics—such as his interests in spiritualism or the historical novel. By 1893, Doyle had decided to kill Holmes off. There was such a backlash against this, however, that he was forced to bring the character back to life in The Hound of the Baskervilles, which would go on to become Holmes’ best-known and best-loved novel. A man of diverse interests, Doyle participated heavily in politics and was knighted by King Edward VII for his writing on the Boer War, whereupon he became Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He had five children between two wives, but none of these children had children of their own. Thus, Doyle has no direct descendants today. He is often referred to today as Conan Doyle, as though his name were a compound. While this was the name he preferred to be called, Conan was simply his middle name and not a part of his full surname. 

Detective fiction is a direct result of the advent of detective agencies in the real world. Police forces did not always exist in the iconic way that they do today. In fact, England did not have something resembling a modern police force until 1749, when the Bow Street Runners were formed. Previously, private citizens were expected to take a much more active role in policing their communities, catching criminals and bringing them before the courts of their own accord. The Bow Street Runners were the first individuals paid by the government and commissioned to deal with such tasks professionally. The Runners were superseded by organizations such as the Metropolitan Police Service, founded in 1829, and others, which slowly took the form of modern police departments. In the meantime, however, there was a rise of private detective agencies that worked alongside early police forces. The first of these was founded in 1833 by an ex-criminal named Eugène François Vidocq. He used exceptionally modern, empirical techniques in his work, including the use of plaster to cast molds of footprints, undercover officers, and even ballistics. The idea of a scientifically-minded expert going head-to-head with expert criminals intrigued the public and inspired writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Honoré de Balzac, and Victor Hugo. 

While the adventures of Sherlock Holmes are probably the best-known examples of early detective fiction, they certainly weren’t the only ones or even the first. The idea of the mastermind detective had enflamed the imaginations of many popular authors. Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket, an important character in his 1853 novel, Bleak House, is as brilliant and peculiar as Holmes. C. Auguste Dupin was another exceptionally popular fictional detective, created by Edgar Allan Poe for his short stories, including “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” published in 1841. Wilkie Collins’ 1868 novel, The Moonstone, is generally considered to be the first full detective novel. The kind of mastermind criminals Doyle favored also inspired a great deal of early film, such as Louis Feuillade’s Fantômas (1913) and Les Vampires (1915) serial films and Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922).