22 Mind-Blowing Facts About Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

8. Doyle Was Sick Of Sherlock Holmes So Killed Him Off... Even Though His Mother Begged Him Not To

Despite the detective being far and away his most-successful creation, Conan Doyle quickly became determined to kill off Sherlock Holmes. He wrote to his mother in November 1891 detailing how the protagonist would not survive past the sixth story. He said:

"I think of slaying Holmes... and winding him up for good an all. He takes my mind from better things." "(This is) the last Holmes story, after which the gentleman vanished, never to return! I am weary of his name."

However, his mother talked him out of it by responding: "You won't! You can't! You mustn't!" So ambivalent towards Sherlock Holmes was Conan Doyle that he would asked publishers for inflated fees for further novels, expecting them to reject his desired sum, only for them to agree - making him one of the best-paid authors of his time. He even said that he had "such an overdose of Holmes that I feel towards him as I do towards pate de fois gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day." Interestingly, having allowing Holmes and Professor Moriarty to plunge to their deaths down the Reichenbach Falls in The Final Problem in December 1893, Conan Doyle only revived the detective in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901 due to the resultant public outcry.