Which British author created the character Sherlock Holmes?

The British author who created the character Sherlock Holmes was Arthur Conan Doyle.

Holmes first appeared in Doyle’s 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet, where he investigates a murder with the help of Dr John Watson. Doyle based Holmes’s remarkable powers of observation and deduction partly on Dr Joseph Bell, one of his professors at the University of Edinburgh medical school.

The detective’s popularity grew dramatically when stories began appearing in The Strand Magazine in 1891. Doyle eventually wrote four Holmes novels and 56 short stories, although he sometimes became frustrated with the character and attempted to end the series. Readers’ protests helped bring Holmes back.

A common mix-up is to credit Agatha Christie, who created Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. G. K. Chesterton created Father Brown, while Wilkie Collins was an earlier pioneer of detective fiction. Doyle’s Holmes remains one of the most influential fictional detectives ever created.