Conan Doyle: Writing, Profession, and Practice

286 Pages·2013·1.082 MB·English

by  Douglas Kerr

CONAN DOYLE
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CONAN DOYLE
WRITING, PROFESSION, AND
PRACTICE
DOUGLAS KERR
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Douglas Kerr 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 978-0-19-967494-7
Printed in Great Britain by
MPG Printgroup, UK
This book is dedicated to the memory of
my grandfather John Kerr, GP
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction 1
Practice 1
Profession 8
2. Sport 18
Sport and the nation 18
The straight left 25
A nation of amateurs 34
3. Medicine 41
The statement of the case 41
The consultants 49
In general practice 58
The cold detective 67
4. Science 79
The curious adventure in Berlin 79
Monsters and committees 100
Thinking like a scientist 122
5. Law and Order 133
Crimes and punishments 133
Edalji’s eyes 148
6. Army and Empire 159
Soldier boys 159
Army 171
Empire 187
7. Spirit 201
Church 201
Spiritualism 209
viii contents
Fairies 233
The new life 249
Bibliography 255
Index 267
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge with gratitude a grant HKU 7438/06H from the Hong
Kong Research Grants Council which helped me carry out the
research for this book.
Warmest thanks to Kelvin Au, Katherine Isobel Baxter, Tammy Ho
Lai Ming, and Kitty Zhang Chengping for their help. This book has
benefi ted from generous advice from many people, including Lee
Aitken, Geetanjali Chanda, Wendy Gan, Christopher Hutton, Tina
Pang, and the anonymous readers at OUP; its remaining faults are, I am
afraid, my own.
I am grateful to Elaine Ho for more than I can say, as ever.
An earlier version of part of C hapter2 was fi rst published in Victorian
Literature and Culture,38/1 (March 2010), 187–206, and an earlier ver-
sion of part of C hapter 4 was fi rst published in Literature and History,
third series, 19/2 (2010), 36–51. I thank the editors of these journals for
permission to publish the revised versions here.