The Great Shadow popular influence on many writers towards the end of the 19th century. Conan Doyle also developed a series of short stories entitled Brigadier Gerard. The series featured Etienne Gerard, a Hussar in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Other writings by Conan Doyle involving the Napoleonic Era include Adventures of Gerard and Uncle Bernac. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Conan Doyle credit his mother, Mary Doyle, who had a passion for books and he describes her as a master storyteller. He says in his biography that,""In my early childhood, as far
Brigadier Gerard wrote with great affection about Marbot's memoirs in "Through the Magic Door". He also drew on other contemporary sources, writing in an author's preface that "readers of Marbot, de Gonneville, Coignet, de Fenezac, Bourgogne, and the other French soldiers who have recorded their reminiscences of the Napoleonic campaigns will recognise the fountain from which I have drawn the adventures of Etienne Gerard." The fictional Gerard is not to be confused with the real Napoleonic officer Étienne Maurice Gérard (1777–1852), who rose to become a Marshal and later Prime Minister of France. The stories were originally published in the "Strand Magazine"