Otázka: My favourite British writer
Jazyk: Angličtina – essay (sloh)
Přidal(a): Aneta Kubištová
My favourite British writer is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I have read almost all the Sherlock Holmes stories. I really like the way how the author is describing the stories. They are a bit mysterious but very realistic at the same time. I would recommend his books to all who like the detective genre and the strong and charismatic main character.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and medical doctor. He lived at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is famous for creating the Sherlock Holmes character. He mostly wrote detective, historical, fantasy and science fiction stories.
He was born in 1859 in Edinburgh. His parents were Irish Catholic. Doyle studied at Stonyhurst College. The school was on medieval principles, with subjects such as rhetoric or Euclidean geometry. Then he studied in Austria at Jesuit school. Doyle rejected the Catholic faith and become an agnostic and later even become a mystical spiritualist. From 1876 he studied medicine at the University Of Edinburgh Medical School. During that time he studied also practical botany. He was really smart and could absorb a lot of information. While studying, Doyle began writing short stories. His stories were often mysterious and set in Africa. He was active in politics, he publicly defended the interests of Great Britain in war conflicts. Doyle has been involved in sports since childhood, he did boxing, played cricket, football and rugby.
In 1886 he wrote A Study in Scarlet, the first story of Sherlock Holmes. The second novel about Holmes, The Sign of Four, was published four years later. Then he started to write short stories that came out every month in the Strand Magazine. The first one is called The scandal in Bohemia. All his stories were very successful with the readers, but it was boring for Doyle to write another sequel, so he let the famous detective die in the Last Case story.
The public were so upset that he had to bring the character back to life and start writing another stories about Sherlock Holmes. Doyle wrote a total of 56 short stories and 4 novels with detective Sherlock Holmes.
The character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired in Doyle’s teacher from university and Auguste Dupin from detective stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. Holmes is not just a private detective, he is also an athlete, scientist and has knowledge of medicine. He is unemotional, solitary and intellectual. Holmes uses logic and scientific observation to solve crimes. He likes smoking his pipe and he plays the violin. He usually wears a coat and his typical hat (called deerstalker). Holmes lives with his only friend Dr Watson in Baker Street 221b in a sublease with Mrs. Hudson. Dr Watson is the storyteller of Sherlock´s stories. He is not so clever as Sherlock but he is very brave and loyal.
Sherlock Holmes has been an inspiration to detectives of many authors of the detective genre, such as Hercule Poirot, writer Agatha Christie, or to other detectives solving problems by deductive methods, such as in the TV series Columbo and Dr House. Many films and series have been made about Holmes. My favourite are series by BBC where Sherlock Holmes is set in the 21st century.
Doyle’s other well-known books include Professor Challenger’s stories. Novel The Lost World is the first and most famous book from series of books about Professor Challenger. The novel describes an expedition to the Amazon, where dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals still live. Professor is the opposite of Sherlock Holmes. Challenger is a highly arrogant and self-centred scientist who does not recognize foreign opinions and considers himself the most intelligent person in the world. He considers his opponents fools and behaves very roughly. The Lost World was filmed several times and became an inspiration for The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Doyle also wrote historical novels. The most famous are The White Company and Sir Nigel, novels set in Hundred Years‘ War, and The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard, stories of Brigadier Gerard from the time of Napoleon.
