Through the Magic Door

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930)

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. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland. Surely there would be something eerie about a line of books were it not that familiarity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified soul embalmed in cere-cloth and natron of leather and printer's ink. Each cover of a true book enfolds the concentrated essence of a man. The personalities of the writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, as their bodies into impalpable dust, yet here are their very spirits at your command (Chapter I).

In this volume, Arthur Conan Doyle invites us into his library and discusses his favourite literature with the listener.

Genre(s): Literary Criticism

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 Chapter I Gail Nelson
00:21:16
Play 02 Chapter II SamanthaBraswell
00:27:16
Play 03 Chapter III Pamela Nagami
00:20:36
Play 04 Chapter IV Gail Nelson
00:25:35
Play 05 Chapter V Gail Nelson
00:23:37
Play 06 Chapter VI TRUEBRIT
00:22:54
Play 07 Chapter VII mpvoice
00:31:47
Play 08 Chapter VIII Deon Gines
00:34:35
Play 09 Chapter IX Peter John Keeble
00:19:21
Play 10 Chapter X Jack Albert
00:17:16
Play 11 Chapter XI Kristin G.
00:18:08
Play 12 Chapter XII Jack Albert
00:27:05