The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection Richard Lancelyn Green Bequest

Conan Doyle

There can be little doubt that Conan Doyle was one of the most influential detective fiction writers in the international history of the genre. The influence of his work is evident in the work of subsequent writers such as G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter, and numerous others. This influence is also clear in relation to modern crime stories, such as the CSI series (which featured Sherlock Holmes in one episode), and even the US medical drama House, which relies on a central relationship between a character named 'House' (aka Holmes) and another called 'Wilson' (aka Watson).
 
At the same time, it would be a mistake to overlook the ways in which Conan Doyle's Holmes stories related to the tradition of detective/crime writing that preceded him. For, by the end of the ninteenth century a range of writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Emile Gaboriau had already begun producing detective stories that themselves were the foundations for what Conan Doyle was later to create. It was Conan Doyle's great skill to anticipate the importance of this developing trend in later-nineteenth-century fiction, and to understand that writing within the genre of detective fiction offered aspiring writers such as him a rich potential.