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Portrait image of Arthur Conan Doyle Painting by Henry L. Gates (1927)

Sample of authors

Doyle, Arthur Conan

Scottish author with Irish ancestry, born in Edinburgh. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, worked as a civil servant, but was also a painter and illustrator. He was sickly, become seriously alcoholic over the years and was admitted into psychiatric care in 1885. He died in 1893. It was Arthur’s mother, Mary, born Foley, who instead held the family together, struggling to give her son a good e...

Further reading

Literary figures

Sam Spade

Gender: Male

Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel and a few short stories about the American private detective Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon, however, is a major classic and like some of his short stories it is the precursor of the hardboiled detective story. The cynical, tough and outright rude Spade and his personal habits are so often copied that they have become clichés.

Further reading