Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
Posted on 21st December 2011 by simonbeattie
Archibald Park’s little books are always hard to resist. Here’s a particularly rare one, c.1840, offering a rather wonderful insight into the early Victorian interpretation of dreams. Around 350 different subjects are listed (apples, beheading, cucumbers, debt, pigeons, etc.) with what they betoken, although to dream of a few things, e.g. laughing, is listed as simply ‘very unfortunate’. But the best thing has got to be the illustrations. What exactly is going on in the folding frontispiece is anyone’s guess:
I used to have something called The New Imperial Dream Book which I picked up for 5p on a high street charity bookstall. Hope I still have it somewhere…