author
Roland Burnham Molineux
Best known today for a sensational New York murder trial, he was also a chemist and the author of a grim, psychologically focused prison novel. His life and writing carry the uneasy pull of true crime, scandal, and turn-of-the-century New York.
1 Audiobook
The Room with the Little Door
by Roland Burnham Molineux
About the author
Born in 1866, Roland Burnham Molineux was an American chemist who later became known as a writer. Project Gutenberg lists him as the author of The Room with the Little Door, a 1902 novel set around condemned prisoners at Sing Sing and often described as semi-autobiographical.
Molineux is remembered even more for the notorious poisoning case that inspired the legal landmark People v. Molineux. Contemporary reference pages and later summaries identify him as the son of General Edward L. Molineux of Brooklyn and note that he was tried for the murder of Katherine Adams before ultimately being acquitted after a second trial.
That mix of literary ambition, public scandal, and courtroom drama gives his work an unusual edge. For listeners coming to his fiction now, the interest is not just historical: it is the sense of a writer who had seen the machinery of accusation and punishment from uncomfortably close range.