Historical dream account · English · original published text
The Inheritance with an Unusual Condition
Robert Southey
The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles; Appendix II: Southey’s Dreams (1881) · Appendix II: Southey’s Dreams, printed p. 384
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Some whimsical person died, and it appeared by his will that he had left me an estate of ten thousand pounds a-year, on condition that I should never again wear breeches, pantaloons, trousers, or any other modification of that masculine garb. So I was deliberating whether to adopt a Moorish or a Highland dress, though I feared the former might not be allowed, or to wear coat and waistcoat with the philibeg.
Diary entry heading: May 10th, 1832.
Source & context
A complete short humorous account from Southey’s dream register. The bequest, clothing condition and deliberation about dress are dream events, not an actual will or legal advice. Historical clothing terms remain source wording. Published in the 1881 edition edited by Edward Dowden, who is credited as editor rather than dreamer or recorder. Source framing — Robert Southey: “I found also a register of some fantastic dreams, noted down, as you may well suppose, not superstitiously, but for their strange combinations.”
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. 384. 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. The entry is the final dream-register paragraph; no exact sleep date is independently verified.
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. 384, IA leaf 426
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
- e2d5e53ef3b7558c8420e2250abb8104d420af9909c4b1d649c128cbe20a1c56
- 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.