Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
1890 - Doyle moved from Southsea. He thought a change was necessary and therefore journeyed to Vienna to study the eye. He returned in the spring of 1891, to central London, renting rooms in Montague Place.
Eventually he found accommodation at 2 Devonshire Place. He specialised as an oculist but this practice met with a similar lack of success and he found even more time for his writings. He began to produce the twelve immortal stories which were later combined as The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, a volume containing many of the most popular of the short stories. He also visited Berlin to investigate bacteriologist Robert Koch’s claim that he had found a cure for tuberculosis. Conan Doyle correctly rejected the claim.
1890 - The Firm of Gridlestone is published
1890 - Angels of Darkness - One of the two unpublished works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle along with ‘The Stonor Case’ that have not been released or seen by the public at the insistence of the Doyle Estate. ‘Angels of Darkness’ was apparently a three-act play, written in 1890, with Dr. Watson as its principal character. It was based on the flashbacks featured in A Study in Scarlet, but was set in San Francisco. It is believed that the doctor becomes romantically involved in the drama.
1890 - The Captain of the Pole-Star - a collection of short stories are published
January 1891 - The first Strand Magazine is published, a long-running English magazine founded by George Newnes. The home of a large number of detective stories, its author of note over the decades included Agatha Christie, Somerset Maugham, G.K. Chesterton, and Aldous Huxley. But above all, the publication owed its success to the accounts in its pages written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring Sherlock Holmes.
The first print run was of some 300,000. Tit-bits was launched by the same company in October 1891.
The Strand could not survive the turbulent 1940’s and in 1950 it ceased publication. Its place in the history of detective literature, however, was assured.
July 1891 - Doyle conceived the then brand new (in England) idea of writing a series of short stories around one central character. His agent, A.P. Watt, sent the first of the stories - A Scandal in Bohemia - to the acting editor of The Strand Magazine, 'the shrewd, bespectacled, heavily moustached' Greenhough Smith, who liked the story and encouraged Conan Doyle to write a series of six, for which he agreed to pay an average of £35 each.
July saw the beginning of an extremely successful series of collaborations, with these new Holmes short stories being published in the monthly The Strand Magazine and accompanied by the illustrations of Sidney Paget. The commission for the illustrations was originally meant for Sidney’s brother, Walter, but was mistakenly sent to Sidney, who used Walter as his model.
The speed with which Conan Doyle could work is shown by his diary: on Friday, April 10 1891, a week after sending off A Scandal in Bohemia he noted: 'Finished A Case of Identity' On Monday the 10th he sent off The Red-Headed League. On the 27th he posted The Boscombe Valley Mystery. After that he wrote The Five Orange Pips, but it was not mailed until Monday, May 18, because he was prostrated by an attack of influenza.
He raised his price to £50 a story 'irrespective of length' and a letter by return post agreed to his terms for six more adventures. He at once began to work on the seventh of the series - The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle - and by November 11 he was able to report to his mother that he had completed all but one of the additional half-dozen.
"I think," Conan Doyle added casually, "of slaying Holmes in the last and winding him up for good. He takes my mind from better things.
"You won’t!" his mother raged. "You can’t, You mustn’t."
So ended the twelve adventures with that of The Copper Beeches, based on an idea suggested to him by his mother. Sherlock Holmes 'life' - for the time being, at least - had been saved by "the Ma’am."
July 1891 - A Scandal in Bohemia is published in the Strand Magazine
August 1891 - The Red-Headed League is published in the Strand Magazine
September 1891 - A Case of Identity is published in the Strand Magazine
October 1891 - The Boscombe Valley Mystery is published in the Strand Magazine
November 1891 - The Five Orange Pips is published in the Strand Magazine
December 1891 - The Man with the Twisted Lip is published in the Strand Magazine
1891 - The White Company is published