Happy Birthday to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, born on this day back in 1859!

Though he is most well-known as the creator of beloved sleuth Sherlock Holmes, there was so much more to the famed writer than just his enduring literary works.

Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to an alcoholic father and Irish Catholic mother. His father’s drinking soon grew so bad that, in 1864, the family fractured, and he and his siblings were placed in different houses across the city. Three years later, his parents attempted to give it another go, but the lingering effects of alcoholism had left their finances in tatters; they were forced to reside in squalid conditions inside a tenement flat in a rougher part of town. Eventually, Doyle’s father succumbed to the effects of many years of both mental and physical illness, passing away in 1893.

That wasn’t to say Doyle’s childhood was completely tragic. He was well-supported by wealthy, more stable relatives and studied at Jesuit schools in both England and Austria before returning to Scotland and studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. It was during this time that he also began to dip his toe into fiction writing, with his first published piece, “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley”, a story set in South Africa, appearing in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal on September 6, 1879. It was also while at university that Doyle met Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher whose astounding intellect would eventually inspire Doyle’s most famous character many years later.

Although writing was becoming a growing hobby, it was a career in medicine that was truly calling…or so Doyle thought. After graduating medical school in 1881, he served as ship’s surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast before returning to England and setting up a practice in Plymouth with a former classmate. The two, unfortunately, could not get along, and the practice floundered. Doyle soon left to set up in his own independent practice.

It, too, failed.

Frustrated, he sought out a more specialized profession as an ophthalmologist.

That didn’t work out either.

With too few patients and too much free time, Doyle once again turned to writing. Remembering his old medical school professor, Dr. Bell, Doyle began crafting a story about a detective with extraordinary powers of deduction. Though he, at first, struggled to find a publisher, his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887 to positive reviews. A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine in February 1890. Starting in 1891, a series of Holmes stories appeared in The Strand magazine to such widespread acclaim that Doyle was able to finally abandon his fledgling practice for good and focus on writing full-time.

The only problem?

He was already tired of it.

Or, rather, already tired of Holmes.

In November 1891 letter to his mother he wrote: “I think of slaying Holmes, … and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.” In an attempt to deflect publishers’ demands for more Holmes stories, he raised his price to a level intended to discourage them, but found they were willing to pay even the large sums he asked. As a result, ironically, Doyle finally achieved both the personal and financial success he always wanted…for a career he didn’t even want to have.

In December 1893, In an effort to find more time to dedicate to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story The Final Problem, only to resuscitate Holmes later due to popular demand. Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories—the last published in 1927—and four novels.

Perhaps it was his dissatisfaction with his work that led Doyle on a quest to find purpose and meaning in several other interests during the course of his life.

Doyle was a keen cricketer, and played on several amateur cricket teams. He was also an avid bowler and passionate marksman, even founding the Undershaw Rifle Club at his home in 1900, constructing a 100-yard range and providing shooting for local men. He was an amateur boxer as well as golfer, and he participated in the English Amateur billiards championship inn 1913. While living in Switzerland, Doyle became interested in skiing, which was relatively unknown at the time, and wrote an article about it for the December 1894 issue of The Strand Magazine. Such was Doyle’s influence, skiing immediately began to take off as a celebrated leisure activity.

Doyle never completely gave up on his medical dreams, either. He served as a volunteer physician during the Second Boer War in South Africa, for which he was ultimately knighted. (That’s right–the “Sir” in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had nothing to do with his literary prowess!)

He campaigned for Parliament twice, once in 1900 and again in 1906 in the Hawick Burghs, but was not elected either time. He did, however, served as a Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey beginning in 1902.

Although Doyle was raised Catholic, he later rejected the faith and became an agnostic, even though his long-held fascination with paranormal phenomena continued his entire life. In 1889, he became a founding member of the Hampshire Society for Psychical Research; in 1893, he joined the London-based Society for Psychical Research; and in 1894, he collaborated with Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore in a search for poltergeists in Devon. In 1918, he published his first spiritualist work, The New Revelation. For the next several years, Doyle travelled travelled the world on “spiritualist missionary work,” giving talks about his spiritualist conviction in Britain, Europe, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Even the numerous cons and hoaxes that emerged in spiritualism’s wake never truly shook the man from his beliefs .

But none of these other pursuits could ever rise above the legacy of his greatest character. For a complicated man of many interests, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will forever, and most memorably, be known as the author of the one and only Sherlock Holmes.