Historical dream account · English · original published text
The Enchanter in an Egg
Robert Southey
The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles; Appendix II: Southey’s Dreams (1881) · Appendix II: Southey’s Dreams, printed p. 380
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Palmerin of England gave me Arcalaus, the enchanter, in the shape of an egg, the enchanter having taken that form, and bade me deliver him to Urganda. Urganda took the egg, and said her husband should eat it for his supper.
Isabel had been reading Amadis and Palmerin, and talking to me a great deal about both ; hence this jumbled dream.
Diary entry heading: December 4th, 1821.
Source & context
Southey reports a jumbled dream involving characters from books, followed by his explanation that Isabel had been reading and discussing Amadis and Palmerin. That waking-reading context remains in the narrative. The account is a personal dream report featuring fictional characters, not an excerpt presented as if the novels themselves were a dream diary. Published in the 1881 edition edited by Edward Dowden, who is credited as editor rather than dreamer or recorder.
Robert Southey, dreamer and recorder, “Southey’s Dreams,” in The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, edited with an introduction by Edward Dowden (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co.; London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1881), printed p. 380. Original English text from the Robarts Library, University of Toronto copy digitized by Internet Archive. Descriptive title and navigation themes added by Synastry.
The complete dated heading is printed. It records the diary entry and is not promoted to an independently verified sleep date.
No Copyright – United States (1881 original English edition) ↗
Original English prose published in the witnessed 1881 edition; the original publication is public domain in the United States. Internet Archive metadata records NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT in the US and the title page visibly prints 1881. Robert Southey died in 1843 and the edition’s editor Edward Dowden in 1913; ordinary author-life-plus-70 terms have also elapsed where applicable. No modern translation, transcription edition or modern editorial additions are reused. No Copyright–United States identifies status, not a new exclusive license or a blanket worldwide reuse grant.
Source locator and text provenance
Appendix II: Southey’s Dreams, printed p. 380, IA leaf 422
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Selected one complete recalled dream at explicit source boundaries; omitted adjacent accounts and page furniture. Joined typesetter line wraps and unambiguous split words, preserving source paragraphs and printed compounds including down-stairs and knick-knack. Applied only listed scan-verified OCR repairs; preserved the printed apparent form giftee. Added a descriptive navigation title, without translation, identity expansion or narrative generation.
- Account text SHA-256
- 5357e197e7f0ddc205cad6abbab8589ae75e7dc46d17ea939eede437a396f002
- Source file SHA-256
- 3105e7a9afc2e0cc5725208180a55c12f8cff63aaa5ad4ea8fc4ac861c7a0b41
Connections in the Loom
Titles, theme labels, illustrations and map connections are editorial navigation aids. They are separate from the account’s words and do not establish connections between real people.