Citations:at death's door

English citations of at death's door

• 1828, Sir Walter Scott, The Fair Maid of Perth, ch. 32:

  The minstrel woman who left the castle yesterday has spread the report everywhere that the Duke of Rothsay is murdered, or at death's door.

• 1840, Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe":

  A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy and bright; that same unhappy niece, whom they had supposed, on the authority of the Parker's Falls Gazette, to be lying at death's door.

• 1862, Wilkie Collins, No Name, ch. 1:

  [S]he looked, seriously and literally, at death's door. I immediately agreed with my uncle that the first thing to be done was to send for medical help.

• 1913, Jack London, John Barleycorn, ch. 32:

  One of my Polynesian sailors lay at death's door with blackwater fever.

• 1934, Writers and Readers: An Eccentric Englishwoman, The Age (Australia), 25 Aug., p. 4:

  During that interval she had been prostrated by yellow fever, and when she lay at death's door, her servants had rifled the place and deserted her.

• 2008, Josh Quittner, "Bill Gates: PC Genius, Internet Fool," Time, 29 June:

  Clearly, a business with $26 billion in cash reserves isn't exactly at death's door.