Historical dream account · English · original published text
A Book as a Pledge of Friendship
Robert Southey
The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles; Appendix II: Southey’s Dreams (1881) · Appendix II: Southey’s Dreams, printed p. 382
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Yesterday I had read some of Hurdis's poems, and was writing concerning them for the Quarterly Review. This made me dream that I saw him and his sisters at their own house, when he showed me two volumes of his works in that edition which he had printed himself. The printing, to my surprise, was remarkably good, and there was a snowy whiteness in the paper which I never saw before. Upon my admiring it, he requested me to accept it, and upon hesitating because he had no other copy, he told me that the set was imperfect, being two volumes instead of three, and he begged I would take one as a pledge of friendship.
Diary entry heading: October 25th, 1826.
Source & context
Southey introduces the dream with his waking reading of Hurdis’s poems and work for the Quarterly Review; that causal explanation is his own account and is retained. The dreamed book, meeting and gift are not presented as verified historical events. 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. 382. Original English text from the Robarts Library, University of Toronto copy digitized by Internet Archive. Descriptive title and navigation themes added by Synastry.
The full dated heading is printed; it is the diary-entry heading, not an independently verified date of the dreamed meeting.
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. 382, IA leaf 424
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
- f11a4b05d5f51d8c2063ed603d7ee7597b7daa1a8246c6945b784fa51fa54770
- 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.