Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle

Review: This review refers to the British edition of Daniel Stashower's Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle.

The author is himself a novelist and knows how to tell a good story. And, let's face it, Conan Doyle's life is a good story. This is perhaps the most readable biography of him since John Dickson Carr's, and of course it pays proper attention to his literary career, neither downplaying nor over-emphasising his major achievement, Sherlock Holmes. In addition, the book acknowledges the central place of Spiritualism in Conan Doyle's later life, rather than trying to ignore it, as some have done.

Alas, like all his predecessors since Pierre Nordon, Mr Stashower has been denied access to the Conan Doyle papers; until they are made available the definitive biography cannot be written. The best studies of Arthur Conan Doyle are the two that deal with specific periods of his earlier life: Owen Dudley Edwards' The Quest for Sherlock Holmes and Geoffrey Stavert's A Study in Southsea. These, of course, are necessarily incomplete.

Meanwhile, Teller of Tales is an admirable account, very attractively presented, of a man who achieved remarkable things - the most remarkable being something he considered trivial.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 198, 2000]