According to a Salt Lake City newspaper article, when Conan Doyle was asked about his depiction of the Latter-day Saints' organisation as being steeped in kidnapping, murder and enslavement, he said: "all I said about the Danite Band and the murders is historical so I cannot withdraw that, though it is likely that in a work of fiction it is stated more luridly than in a work of history. It's best to let the matter rest".[6] Conan Doyle's daughter has stated: "You know, father would be the first to admit that his first Sherlock Holmes novel was full of errors about the Mormons."[6] Historians speculate that "Conan Doyle, a voracious reader, would have access to books by Fannie Stenhouse, William A. Hickman, William Jarman, John Hyde and Ann Eliza Young, among others",[6] in explaining the author's early perspective on Mormonism.
Years after Conan Doyle's death, Levi Edgar Young, a descendant of Brigham Young and a Mormon general authority, alleged that the author had privately apologised, saying that "He [Conan Doyle] said he had been misled by writings of the time about the Church"[6] and had "written a scurrilous book about the Mormons."[7]
In August 2011, the Albemarle County, Virginia, school board removed A Study in Scarlet from the district's sixth-grade required reading list following complaints from students and parents that the book was derogatory toward Mormons.[8][9] It was moved to the reading lists for the tenth-graders, and remains in use in the school media centres for all grades.[10]
