Through The Magic Door

Through The Magic Door is an essay written by Arthur Conan Doyle and first published in 1907. The author narrates the books that he has in his library and that have influenced his writing.

Conan Doyle exposes his memoirs and begins with a review of his beginnings as a reader and as a writer. He explains the concerns of his youth and that he would later shape in his work.

Conan Doyle goes on to openly show his library, detailing each shelf and the authors that are part of his collection and his life. The order is made by the physical place they occupy, and so he goes from row to row highlighting the works and authors in it. Among them are Scott, Stevenson, Maupassant, Kipling, Melville...

While some authors have their own section, other books are simply listed in chronological order.

Through multiple reflections, Conan Doyle expresses his great love for books and his favorite corner of his house, his library.

"I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more".