柯南.道尔“神探福尔摩斯”之父.docVIP

柯南.道尔“神探福尔摩斯”之父 　　One summer evening in 1889, a young medical school graduate named Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle arrived by train at London’s Victoria Station and took a 1)hansom cab two and a half miles north to the famed Langham Hotel on Upper 2)Regent Street. Then living in the coastal town of Southsea, near Portsmouth, the 30-year-old 3)ophthalmologist was looking to advance his writing career. The magazine Beeton’s Christmas Annual had recently published his novel, 4)A Study in Scarlet, which introduced the private detective Sherlock Holmes. Now Joseph Marshall Stoddart, managing editor of Lippincott’s Monthly, a Philadelphia magazine, was in London to establish a British edition of his publication. At the suggestion of a friend, he had invited Conan Doyle to join him for dinner in the Langham’s5)opulent dining room. 　　 　　Amid the 6)bustle of waiters, the 7)chink of 8)fine silver and the hum of dozens of conversations, Doyle found Stoddart to be “an excellent fellow,” he would write years later. But he was captivated by one of the other invited guests, an Irish playwright and author named Oscar Wilde. “He had a curious precision of statement, a 9)delicate flavour of humour, and a 10)trick of small gestures to illustrate his meaning,” Doyle remembered. For both writers, the evening would prove a turning point. Wilde left with a commission to write his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which appeared in Lippincott’s June 1890 issue. And Doyle agreed to produce a second novel starring his 11)ace detective; 12)The Sign of Four would 13)cement his reputation. Indeed, critics have speculated that the encounter with Wilde, an 14)exponent of a literary movement known as 15)the Decadents, led Conan Doyle to deepen and darken Sherlock Holmes’ character: in The Sign of Four’s opening scene, Holmes is revealed to be addicted to a “seven-percent solution” of cocaine. 　　 　　Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of Charles Doyle, an alcoho