(1832-1893)

The father of Arthur Conan Doyle. An illustrator and watercolor painter, he was obsessed with fairies and the occult and so many of his paintings and drawings were on that theme and topic. He developed epilepsy and spent the last years of his life in an insane asylum, during which he kept a diary. This diary was later recovered and reproduced in the book The Doyle diary: The last great Conan Doyle mystery : with a Holmesian investigation into the strange and curious case of Charles Altamont Doyle.

Most of the diary contains drawings or watercolors instead of written entries, and though some of these drawings are realistic depictions of his environment, most are fantastical drawings involving fairies, elves, mystical creatures, and animals. He also loved puns, and many of his drawings depict really terrible ones, although that may be more of a factor of the time in which they were made.