Micah Clarke - Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde

Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde

In 1889, shortly after the publication of Micah Clarke, Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde were both invited for a dinner party in London with John Marshall Stoddard of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in the United States. As a result of the dinner, both authors agreed to write novels to be published by Lippincott's. Conan Doyle's novel was his second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four. Wilde's was The Picture of Dorian Gray. During the dinner party the two authors chatted. Wilde disclosed that he had read Micah Clarke and liked it.

Conan Doyle mentioned the incident in his 1924 autobiography, Memories and Adventures. He explained that he and Wilde became friendly, but that the friendship remained a distant one at best, and that it grew more distant as Wilde's reputation became questionable. The actual friendly relationship appears to be true, but that Wilde liked Micah Clarke remains at issue. In the recent biography of Conan Doyle, Teller of Tales. author Daniel Stashower suspects Wilde would never have liked such a novel. But Conan Doyle pointed out in his autobiography that what Wilde liked was the characterization of Judge George Jeffreys in the novel. Jeffreys, the notorious bully of the law courts of his day, was shown as a handsome, brilliant man with a flaw in his character - a fallen angel type. That would have been of interest to Wilde.