THE POLICEMAN’S DISCOVERY “Eleven o’clock and a windy night!” might have been the cry of a mediæval watchman at that hour on the 24th July 19–. Constable Mulligan was more reticent, as it formed no part of his duties to intimate publicly the time or the state of the weather. Nevertheless the bells of the Anglican Church, Troy, London, S.W., chimed the hour through the clamour of a high wind; and those people who were not in bed must have decided to retire. Not that any one appeared to be stirring. The lights were extinguished in all windows within the range of Mulligan’s vision, and the flashing of his lantern on the doors and gates in Achilles Avenue showed that they were discreetly closed. Not even a tramp or a cat enlivened the roadway. Mulligan was apparently the sole waking person in a sleeping world. Troy was a bran-new suburb, built by a jerry-builder, who knew Greek history through the medium of Lempriere’s Dictionary.

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 of their own, other books are simply listed in chronological order.