Founded in 1997, the Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection is an independent group that works closely with the Toronto Public Library to support the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection. Our objectives are:
You can read more about the history of the Friends in this article (PDF format), reprinted from the Friends newsletter, The Magic Door.
Our journal, The Magic Door, published three times a year since 1998, brings you fascinating articles about the Collection and news about Friends' special events. The publication's name comes from the title of a volume of Conan Doyle's essays about his favourite authors.
You can sample an issue here (830KB PDF file) and here (2.6MB PDF file).
The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia online has a page dedicated to the Friends and a complete index to all Magic Door issues.
In line with our objectives, one of our more gratifying tasks is to help the Collection acquire new items. Here are some of the treasures the Friends have donated to the Collection:
Membership and other donations on an ongoing basis make these purchases possible and allow the Collection to acquire valuable literary and biographical treasures beyond what its budget would normally allow.
We also organize public events from time to time, to illuminate the life and works of Arthur Conan Doyle and to highlight some of the Collection's treasures. Information about our upcoming events is online here.
In 2002, to honour the memory of Cameron Hollyer, the first Curator of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, the Friends established the annual Cameron Hollyer Memorial Lecture. Since its founding, the lecture has seen a stellar series of informative and entertaining talks on Conan Doyle and his work by highly respected authors, scholars and performers. We have published all lectures since 2008 in pamphlet form (except for 2016), of which a limited number of copies are available for purchase. Find out here how you can order copies.