sold Arthur Conan Doyle Explains Why He Stopped Writing Sherlock Holmes Stories

Physician, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, which after Shakespeare’s plays have been translated into more languages than any other work in English.

Doyle painted the most evocative pictures of Victorian London, and wove fabulous webs of intrigue, so the stories have lost nothing in the century and more since they were first published. He never fully understood their quality, however, and longed to be remembered for what he considered more serious work. Today he is in the literary Pantheon, as he always wanted, but for Holmes only. His other works are largely unread.

Arthur Conan Doyle Autograph Letter Signed on his Buckingham Palace Mansions letterhead, one page, April (1927 or 28), to a person who appears to be a journalist who had asked if he would be writing any more Sherlock Holmes stories. “I fear there is little chance of my doing much more literary work. With a correspondence of 30 or 40 letters a day, dealing often with abstruse cases, and with constant demands to take part in meetings, my time is much broken. I was glad to withdraw Holmes before the public were too weary of him. I have a story “The Fabricious Deep” in my mind which no doubt will reach the Strand Magazine in time – but how long it will be I don’t yet know. No doubt I shall write upon psychic subjects. My last such book “Pheneas Speaks” has met with considerable success, and I shall be glad if you mentioned the fact. There is a movement to sydicate it in the press of all foreign countries. Yours sincerely, A. Conan Doyle.”

In the last decades of his life, Doyle became a believer in psychic phenomena, and wrote extensively on the subject. He mentions this here, and asks his correspondent to give this spiritual work a plug. Because he seemed always to want to shake Holmes, Doyle’s letters very rarely mention the world’s greatest consulting detective. In the past decade, we have seen only three letters that do. Two mentioned Holmes in passing discussions of royalties due to him. Only one gave any important information about the Holmes stories, and it is right here.

Interestingly, Doyle’s statement about Holmes in this letter, while his honest perception, is inaccurate. It was Doyle himself, rather than the public, which grew tired of Sherlock Holmes. That he should actually have been glad to stop writing the wonderful Homes stories is both fascinating and sad.