Why did Arthur Conan Doyle kill Sherlock Holmes?

Part of it seems to me an enthusiastic amateur that he was starting to find Holmes insufferable. Imagine living with a know-it-all like that in your head all the time. He may have left the air-gun there because he had an inkling that he might need him again, but I truly feel that Arthur Conan Doyle wanted Holmes to die and not return.

@zephyr826 Well that seems to be the assumption, but when you read the Final Problem and the Adventure of the Empty House back to back, it just has that pat, neatly wrapped up feel of reading any one story. Maybe he wanted a break, but I’m pretty convinced he was planning to bring him back.

One thing I wonder about is business reasons. Was the Strand souring on continuing to publish Holmes stories? If so maybe the death was designed to provoke public outcry, convincing the Strand that publishing Holmes was a good business decision.

@Snarp You might be right. I haven’t read the Adventure of the Empty House in ages. I’ll have to go back and look.

You are aware you omitted his knighthood are you not? A rather elementary, fundamental gaff old bean.

@ucme My country does not recognize titles of nobility. At least that’s my convenient excuse.

@Snarp, we don’t confer them, and we don’t allow U.S. citizens to hold them. But we respect them as a courtesy toward other nations and use them as a form of address when appropriate.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle initially wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories as self-contained shorts printed serially in various monthlies. By trade, he was a doctor; writing was a secondary career. The stories were an instant hit, so gradually Doyle shifted his attention to writing. By 1893, he had become something of a celebrity author and thereby had the clout to focus on topics that truly interested him, namely spiritualism and international politics. He felt that his intellect was wasted on Sherlock Holmes stories. After writing The Final Solution, which he truly intended to be the death of Sherlock Holmes and the end of the series, the public outcry was so great that he felt pressured to resurrect Holmes. So, in 1903, he released The Adventure of the Empty House, in which Holmes returns.

The Strand magazine was hand-picked by Doyle for the release of the Sherlock Holmes stories and the two parties enjoyed a mutually beneficial publishing relationship until the author’s death in 1930, although the magazine obviously had to discontinue publishing Holmes stories when Doyle ceased writing them.

One interesting side note: Doyle was very close friends with Harry Houdini, who eventually became so frustrated with the author’s spiritualistic leanings (Doyle believed in faeries, spirit channeling, etc.) that he broke off the friendship. Reportedly, Doyle refused to believe that Houdini did not possess supernatural powers, regardless of Houdini’s firm assertion that his “magic” was merely a collection of well executed illusions.

@Svidrigailov I did not know that Doyle was a spiritualist, which is interesting since the Sherlock Holmes stories seem to be so firmly based in reason and lacking in any supernatural explanations. (Aside from some of the rather shoddy “science” prominent at the time)

Yep. So much so, in fact, that his wife held a massively publicized seance after his death to fulfill his final wish. Although she claimed to have spoken with his spirit, the event was generally met with derision.

@Snarp & @Svidrigailov indeed. It is one of the reasons I could never fully respect Doyle. Houdini on the other hand just gets more and more impressive the more you hear of him. He could recognize a fraud even when a significant portion of the scientific community was fooled. He is mentioned in the chapter on ectoplasm in Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.

@fundevogel Though I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, I was saddened to find that Conan Doyle himself was a bit of a kook. Apparently, the incident that Doyle cites as the reason that Houdini must be performing real magic has to do with a trick our enigmatic illusionist orchestrated specifically for him. It involved paint soaked foam-like balls spelling out a secret message known only to Doyle on a cloth-covered table. So complex and mystifying was the trick that even today no one is really sure how he did it. Seems like a silly way to prove one’s lack of supernatural powers to a fanatical believer, but I digress. Houdini was a fascinating figure whose commitment to reason never ceases to impress me.

@Svidrigailov And how. It always thought it ironic that the quintessential figure of reason was written by such a credulous man.

@fundevogel It helped me to consider that Doyle was never truly committed to Holmes; his loyalty had always been with Watson, who, like himself, was a doctor and a man who preferred the heart to the head.

@Svidrigailov I didn’t know that.

I will grant that it’s partly inference. I suppose I’ve spent a little too much time thinking and reading about the subject to not venture into the realm of opinion. But oh the fun of making unqualified statements.

Seems like if Houdini really wanted to prove to Doyle that he had no supernatural powers, and it meant a lot to him to convince his friend, then he would have just shown him how he did it.

I’m intrigued by this notion that Doyle didn’t like Holmes. In hound of the Baskervilles every character, including Watson, believes in some kind of supernatural origin for the hound at least to some extent. Holmes is the only one who never entertains such a notion for a second, and he is right of course. Fascinating to think that Doyle really sides with Watson and the others, but goes ahead and makes Holmes right. I still love the rationality of Holmes, even if his author was a nutter.