A paradigmatic story about a lost Eden, a magical realm the central narrator stumbles on at the age of five when he goes through a mysterious door in a wall a few streets from his London home. Later opportunities to revisit it are passed over for more mundane urgencies, but latterly he becomes obsessed with finding it again, with tragic consequences. The story is hedged about with Wellsian scepticism in the frame narrative, but doubt never quite leads to complete disbelief. For all the familiar Edwardian male clubland setting, the story has a haunting quality that draws on unconscious memory and unconscious desire.
First published in the Daily Chronicle, 1906, collected and reprinted frequently since. Available to read online here
A Personal Anthology 