Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859, though his familial roots lay across the Irish Sea. After attending Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school in Lancashire, he returned to the city of his birth to study medicine. Among his teachers at Edinburgh University was Joseph Bell, whose ‘eerie trick for spotting details’ inspired his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. Not immediately, however. Years passed before Conan Doyle turned his hand to detective fiction, which he regarded as a poor relation of the literary world. As a young doctor struggling to make ends meet in his Southsea practice, he began writing short stories and articles to supplement his income. His passion was for historical fiction, but when his own attempt to pen a full-length novel met with a lukewarm response, he recalled his old university professor, whose extraordinary observational and deductive skills he thought would make for a formidable sleuth.
The result was A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. Initially, neither that book nor the 1890 follow-up, The Sign of Four, set the public imagination alight. But when Sherlock Holmes short stories appeared in The Strand magazine in 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle was quickly elevated into the top rank of popular authors. He was soon able to devote himself to writing full-time, and he envisaged a future without Holmes, whom he appeared to have killed off in The Final Problem (1893). ‘He takes me from better things,’ Conan Doyle said of his master detective, last seen going over the Reichenbach Falls with arch-enemy Professor Moriarty. But such was the public clamour for more intriguing cases for the cerebral occupant of 221B Baker Street and his stolid aide Dr Watson that Conan Doyle submitted to a resurrection. His ambivalence remained, yet Holmes was still going strong 30 years later, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes appearing in 1927, three years before his creator’s death.
Conan Doyle had much greater affection for his historical novels, such as Micah Clarke (1889), The White Company (1891) and the Brigadier Gerard books, set during the Napoleonic Wars. He embraced science fiction with the Professor Challenger series, The Lost World (1912) becoming his best-known work outside the Holmes stories.
Another Challenger book, The Land Of Mist (1926) had spiritualism as its theme. Conan Doyle, who lost a son and brother to the influenza epidemic following the Great War, had a long-standing interest in psychic phenomena and the occult. He campaigned on social issues such as divorce law reform and prison welfare, and was a tireless crusader against injustice. He twice stood for Parliament. Military history and sport were among his other passions.
Knighted in 1902, Arthur Conan Doyle died at his Sussex home on 7 July 1930, aged 71.
Although he produced many notable literary works, James Barrie was best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote several successful novels and plays. The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up was a 1904 West End play about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. In 1911, Barrie developed the play into the novel Peter and Wendy.
Peter Pan is described in the novel as a young boy who wears clothes made of leaves and plays the pipes. He is the only boy able to fly without the help of Tinker Bell’s fairy dust. He has refused to grow up and distrusts mothers as he felt betrayed by his own. He cares about Wendy, but can only see her as a motherly figure, not as a sweetheart. Barrie attributes this to “the riddle of his very being”. He is very confident and forgetful as he needs to forget what he’s learned through his adventures in order to maintain his childlike wonder.
“All children, except one, grow up.”
Peter Pan is the exception to that rule, a fearless, resourceful boy who befriends the three Darling children – Wendy, John and Michael – teaches them to fly and whisks them away to Neverland. There they encounter the Lost Boys, a princess in peril and villainous Captain Hook – Peter’s sworn enemy – in a magical adventure story as ageless as its intrepid hero.
Barrie was a supporter of Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) during his lifetime. In 1929, he was approached to sit on a committee to help the hospital buy land so it could build a much-needed new wing; Barrie declined but said that he “hoped to find another way to help”. Two months later, the board learned that Barrie had donated the rights to Peter Pan to GOSH.
Lord Callaghan and his wife Audrey – then chair of the board of governors at GOSH – played a pivotal role in securing a special provision in the UK’s 1988 Copyright Designs & Patents Act. This unique amendment granted GOSH the right to royalties from Peter Pan in perpetuity, ensuring that J.M. Barrie’s original gift to the hospital continued beyond the expiration of standard copyright.
For almost a century, this extraordinary gift has supported the hospital’s vital work, helping to give seriously ill children lives that are fuller and longer. Through theatre productions, school performances, musicals and more, Peter Pan continues to benefit Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity (GOSH Charity) to this day. Thus, a royalty of £2.00 for each book sold here is paid to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
