Portrait of Arthur Conan Doyle by Kathleen Shackleton
(Copyright reserved)
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Dame Jean Conan Doyle
(1912-1997)
Air Commandant, Director of the WRAF,
and daughter of the creator of Sherlock Holmes
On 5 February 1981, the centenary of the death of one of the University's
most illustrious alumni Thomas Carlyle, the daughter of another, Dame
Jean Conan Doyle, presented to the University the manuscript of a lecture
that her father, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had given on Thomas Carlyle to
the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society in 1886.
Jean Conan Doyle was educated at Granville House, Eastbourne and enjoyed
a spectacular career in the Women's Royal Air Force (formerly the Women's
Auxiliary Air Force). As the holder of her father's copyrights in the
USA she maintained a close concern on anything involving his name, and
was a good friend to her father's alma mater. "The Edinburgh
Stories of Arthur Conan Doyle", published in 1981 by Polygon Books,
is dedicated to her. She would have welcomed Forbes
Gibb's gift to Edinburgh University Library of part of his extensive
collection of editions of her father's work and a collection of titles
from the Golden Age of detective fiction.
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