The Meaning of Dream Books

Author(s): Maureen Perkins

Source: History Workshop Journal, No. 48 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 102-113
Published by: Oxford University Press
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 THE I4DIFS)oEW

~~Dra-okttepg,Lno 19.

Londlon.-W. 6. t'OLti EY, Printat aud Publisher,

Great St. Andrew Street, Bloomsbury. WV.O.
Dream-booktitle page,London1

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 FEATURE:DREAMS
The Meaningof DreamBooks
by MaureenPerkins

'Whateverwomenmaybe, I thoughtthatmen, in the nineteenthcentury,

were above superstition.'
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, 1860.

Freud called his magnumopus his 'dreambook', intentionallyechoing a

well-known,perhapseven notorious,form of street literature.1In Europe,
dreambooks were as old as publishingitself,andbecame,in Britainat least,
the dominantformof chapbooktowardsthe end of the nineteenthcentury.2
They were particularlyaimedat womenreaders,formingan importantpart
of women'spopularculture.In using the same title, Freud was linkinghis
own 'interpretationof dreams'to the manywidespreadinterpretationsthat
circulatedin popular 'dreamers',and it is reasonableto assume that he
expectedsome comparisonto be made.Not only was he awareof the genre,
but he seemed to acknowledgea debt of inspirationto it: 'One day I dis-
covered to my great astonishmentthat the view of dreams which came
nearestto the truthwas not the medicalbut the popularone, half involved
though it still was in superstition'.3He rejected the scientific opinion
advancedby writerssuchas CarlBinz,thatdreamswerefroth('Traumesind
Schaume'),and was drawn,instead,to the popularview that dreamshave
a meaning,'whichcan be discoveredby some processof interpretationof a
content which is often confused and puzzling'.Distancing himself from
those who smiledat attemptsto finda significancein dreams,Freudset out,
with what we now know to be revolutionaryconsequences,to replace the
ancient, traditionalcode of meanings that came in every street pedlar's
stock of dreambooks with his own collectionof symbols,a new lexicogra-
phy of dreaming.By developingthe role of dreamsas fragmentsof sup-
pressed wishes he appropriatedthe common dream book's emphasison
fear,hope, anddesire;butby tracingthose fragmentsbackto childhoodand
repression, he transformed a significant aspect of nineteenth-century
women'sculture,moving the focus of dreamsfrom the futureto the past.
The time-hallowednatureof dreamsin chapbookliterature,as oracles of
the futureconsultedchieflyby women,was superseded.
Dream books, or dreamers, provided an A to Z of meanings; for
example,the appearanceof comets in a dream'is ominousof war,plague,
famine, and death', to dream of a cat signifiesthat you will soon catch a
thief, beer is a portent of an accident,and crows flyingin cloudy weather
show comingloss and misery.4Althoughsome writersexpressedthe belief
that these meaningswere derived from Artemidorusof Ephesus, whose

History Workshop Journal Issue 48 ? History Workshop Journal 1999

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104 HistoryWorkshopJournal

work on dreamsin the second centurywas thoughtto be the earliestsur-

viving exampleof the genre, 5 dreambooks no doubt fed off one another,
just as all street literaturedid. It was possible for the same materialto be
recycledin several differentforms.First,there was the dreambook itself,
with little apartfromits alphabeticallist and perhapsa section on physiog-
nomy.Then therewere books of fate, whichincludedseveraldifferentways
of readingthe future,from signsin the naturalworldto the castingof dice,
as well as lists of fortunateand unfortunatedays of the year. Finally,there
were fortune-tellingbooks, much more concerned with remedies and
coursesof action,guidesto influencingthe future:these mightincludewhat
they called 'recipes',that is formsof ritualto ensuredreamingabout a par-
ticularsubject.
In the middle of the nineteenth century,James Guest describedhow
streetpedlarssold thiswide arrayof differenttypesof fortune-tellingbooks.
Hawkers,he wrote, would sell

at whatthey could get, at pricesvaryingfrom2d to 6d, sometimesa good

supperand leave to sleep in the barnor outhouse,often whenthey could
get the blindside of the old dameor the youngone withtheirPamphlets,
Books of Dreams, fortune telling, Nixon's prophecies,books of fate,
ballads,etc.6

The appearanceon this list of the name of RobertNixon, Cheshireprophet

of the seventeenth century,is furtherindicationof the belief that these
chapbookstappedinto an old tradition.Any form of predictingthe future,
whetherit was prophecyor fortune-telling,claimedto carrythe authority
of long-establishedlineage. The astrologerRaphael, otherwiseknown as
Robert CrossSmith,claimedthat the dreambook he published(TheRoyal
Book of Dreams, 1830) was derivedfrom an ancientmanuscriptwhich he
had simplystumbledacrosswhile out on a countrywalk.In the summerof
182- [sic] he had come across a broken-downSomersetshirecourt-house,
and was there shown a 'curiousmanuscript,whichwas buriedin the earth
for several centuries,containingone thousandand twenty-fouroraclesor
answersto dreams ... whereby any person of ordinarycapacitymay dis-
cover these secrets of fate, which the universalfiat of all nations ... has
acknowledgedto be portendedby dreamsand nocturnalvisions'.Similarly,
in 1850 the publisherof The Dreamer'sOracleclaimedto have found the
original of his dream book 'in the Ark of a Late CelebratedWizard'.
Throughoutthe nineteenthcenturyrepeatedissues of Napoleon'sBook of
Fate,perhapsthe most popularfortune-tellingbook of all, claimedto be a
translationof a book 'writtenin Germannearly500 years ago', 'a cabinet
of curiosities, and valuable secrets', which had been seized, so it was
claimed,fromthe belongingsof NapoleonBonaparteafterhis defeat at the
Battle of Leipzig.
These hoarypedigreesclearlyconferredsome kindof authority,but they

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 TheMeaningof DreamBooks 105

also served to distance the publisherswho reproducedthem, as demon-

strated by The TrueFortuneTellerof 1850, printed in Edinburgh,which
issued the followingdisclaimer:

TO THE READER
The foregoingpages are publishedprincipallyto show the superstitions
which engrossedthe mind of the populationof Scotlandduringa past
age, and which are happily disappearingbefore the progress of an
enlightenedcivilisation.It is hoped, therefore,that the reader will not
attachthe slightestimportanceto the solutionsof the dreamsas rendered
above, as dreamsare generallythe resultof a disorderedstomach,or an
excited imagination.7

Some compilersachieveda similardistancingeffect by publishingtitles that

claimedto come from abroad.Some noted that they were translatedfrom
the originalGreek, while the High GermanFortune-Teller was a frequent
title, and the ubiquitousNapoleon'sBook of Fatewas said to be translated
from the German.
Manydreambooks demonstrateda familiaritywith the burgeoningdis-
cussion of dreams from a physiologicalstandpoint.As Tony James has
demonstratedso well for France, 'dreamsand associatedphenomena ...
preoccupiedwriters,philosophers,and psychiatrists[as a] key theme of
nineteenth-centuryEuropean thought'.8Those chapbook writers who
aspiredto respectabilitymade sure, if only througha preface,that readers
knew they were familiarwith currentdiscussion.Despite nods in the direc-
tion of scientificopinion, however, they proceeded to give all the usual
interpretations.The compilerof the 1850 TrueFortuneTellerjust quoted,
for example, despite invoking 'a disordered stomach', published a tra-
ditional alphabeticallist, though he also added that he could not be held
responsiblefor suchnonsensesince he had found all this materialin a cave
in whicha 'gypsey',old MrsBridget,or MotherBridget,made her home.
The role of women in this genre was crucial.Mother Bridget was one
attributedsource, Mother Bunch another, and Mother Shipton a third.
These apocryphaldesignationswere doubtlessintendedto attractreaders
by assuringthem that the compilersunderstoodtheir needs and interests,
and they point to a largely female readership.James Guest's comment
above depictsthe streettraderas sellingto 'the old dameor the youngone'.
As late as 1899one Londonbooksellercommented:

I sell a most surprisingnumberof publicationsof the propheticalmanac

and dream book class ... The greater number of my customers in this
way areworkgirlsanddomesticservants,or youngmarriedwomenof the
'smallvilla' class.9

In 1807 when Joseph Powell was arrested and tried for fortune-telling,

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106 HistoryWorkshopJournal

amongstthe papersseized from his house were 'numerousmemorandums'

recordingthe dreamsof clientswho had consultedhim abouttheir 'destiny
and futureevents'.10Most of these clients were women, and many of their
questions related to love, marriage,and children. There was indeed a
commonbelief thatthe use of dreamsas oraclesof the futurewasverymuch
a partof women'sculture.WhenMr Blair,a memberof the Societyfor the
Suppressionof Vice, set out to entrapPowell, he sent a letter claimingto
ask questionsput by a youngmaidservant.Whenwouldshe marry?Would
she have children?Suchquestions,andfromsuchan innocentsource,were,
we are led to believe, commonlyput to Powell.In an 1865study,TheLitera-
ture and Curiosities of Dreams, Frank Seafield wrote that dream interpre-
tation'is now an instrumentby whicha chap-bookpedlarmaybest ascertain
what is the smallestnumberof lies whichCinderellawill insiston in return
for her penny,withoutconsideringherselfcheated'.'1
The contents of the dreambooks themselvesconfirmthat women were
the most likely readers.The 1750 Dreams and Moles containsadvice on
'How to restore a lost Maidenhead,or solder a cracktone' (a recipe using
myrtleberries).12'Charmsfor Dreaming'advisedreadershow to obtain a
dreamwhich would containan image of their futuremarriagepartner.In
Mother Shipton's Fortune Teller of 1861, for example, there is 'A Charm for
Dreaming'which advisesthe readerhow to be sure to dreamof the future
by appealingto 'Luna every womans' [sic] friend'. The Dreamer'sTrue
Friendof 1861includes'how to choose a husbandby the colourof his hair'.
In The Dreamer's Sure Guide; or the interpretation of dreams faithfully
revealedof 1830 a pull-out illustrationshows a woman lying on a couch
dreaming,with pictorialrepresentationsof her dreamsall aroundher. The
Dreamer'sOraclealso has a largeillustrationshowinga womandreamingof
a handsomeman.13The seeds of a wish-fulfilmentinterpretationof dreams
are clearlyhere, with the differencelyingin whatthese imagesactuallyrep-
resent. Are they visions of the future, appearingin dream as prophetic
insights?Or are they spectralimaginings,lurkingin the unconscious?14
Marriageand childrenare by far the most common subjects.'A virgin
dreamingshe has put on new garments,shewsan alterationin her condition
by way of marriage.''If a womandreamsshe is with child,it shews sorrow
and sadness.' In Small Books and Pleasant Histories Margaret Spufford has
relatedthe popularityof courtshipbooks in the earlymodernperiodto the
late age of marriages, and in Women in Early Modern England Sara
Mendelsonand PatriciaCrawfordwrite that courtship'compriseda major
life-stage for the majorityof the female populace, as women were left to
their own resources[meaningoutside the familyhome in whichthey grew
up] for a lengthyperiod between pubertyand marriageat about age 25 or
26'.15 In the nineteenth centuryfears of spinsterhoodcontinuedto be an
issue for manywomen.The 1851censusshowedthat women outnumbered
men, and this contributedto widespreaddiscussionabout the problemof
'surplus'women.16Therewere certainlyplentyof reasonsfor youngwomen

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 TheMeaningof DreamBooks 107

to want to read about the subject of marriage,but why should this be

approachedthroughdreaming?
Dreaming and day-dreaming,its related activity, were on the very
bordersof respectability.Seafieldincludeda chapterentitled 'Analogiesof
Dreaming and Insanity',and Freud devoted the final section of the first
chapter of The Interpretationof Dreams to 'The Relations between Dreams
and Mental Diseases'. The dominantscientificopinion at the end of the
nineteenthcenturywas that dreamswere an indicationof disturbance,and
thatthey did not occurin the deep, normalsleep of a healthyperson.Cham-
bers'sJournalstatedcategorically:'No one dreamswhenhe is soundasleep.
Dreamstake place only duringan imperfector perturbedsleep.'17CarlBinz
describeddreamsas 'somaticprocesseswhichare in every case useless and
in manycasespositivelypathological'.18 Certainlytherehadbeen greatmen
in the past who had experiencedpropheticdreaming,but just as prophecy
was an activitywhichbecamerelegatedto history,so propheticdreaming's
greatest days were clearly over. When a contributorto Blackwood'sin
August 1840 discussedthe topic under the heading 'A few passages con-
cerningomens, dreams,etc.', he related stories of men who had premoni-
torydreams,whileaddressinghis thoughtsto an imaginaryEusebius,clearly
relegatingthe subjectto a classicalpast.19Seafieldwrote:'Oneirocriticism
is at presentin the sere and yellow leaf of its fortunes.It sprangup to meet
us like a god; it retiresfrom us with the hang-dogexpressionof a rebuked
costermonger'.In the nineteenth century,men who would admit to pre-
monitorydreamswere challengingthe normsof middle-classmasculinityof
their day.20Dreamingwas predominantlyassociatedwith mentalor physi-
cal disturbance.In the latterhalf of the century,women's associationwith
hysteria and altered states of consciousness was depicted by medical
opinion as connected with menstruationand physiologicalweakness,and
disturbedsleep was part of this patternof neuroticdisorder.Even in those
instances when some approval was expressed of prophetic dreaming,
women were most frequentlythe dreamers.In 1833,in just one exampleof
manyin the periodicalpress,Chambers'sJournalcarrieda storyof a young
man'slife being saved by the dreamsof his aunt,who saw the fishingboat
he was due to go out in sinking.She had this dreamthree timesin one night,
and in the morningentreatedhim not to go. He followed her advice, and
learnedlater that the boat had sunk, and all in it drowned.21
Even if visionary dreams sometimes met with disapproval,why did
dream books, with their largely conservativecontent, arouse condemna-
tion? Wilkie Collinswrote of 'the helpless discomfortfamiliarto us all in
sleep, when we recognizeyet cannot reconcile the anomaliesand contra-
dictionsof a dream'.22Dream books offered the calmingreassurancethat
there was orderand meaningin the apparentconfusion.They couldhelp to
pacify unruly imaginationseven when dreams made the fixed nature of
genderseem questionable.Dreamsand Moles,for example,describeswhat
it would mean if a womandreamtthat she was a man:

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108 HistoryWorkshopJournal

When a womandreamsshe is a man, and is not married,she will have a

husband;or if she's withoutchildrenshe'll have a son, . . . and to a maid-
servant,muchincumberance;'tis verrefortunateto a harlot,becauseshe
will forsakeher evil ways.23

A woman'sdreamsof manhood,then, signifycomingfulfilment.To a pros-

titute this is a good sign - the man,no doubt,will rescueher. The maidser-
vant, it is suggested,mighthave cause to regrether dream,since it heralds
an unwanted pregnancy.Even more potentially threatening than such
gender-subversivedreaming, however, was the question of sexuality.
Dreamsand Molesrelateswhatit meansfor 'a barrenwoman'to dreamthat
'she prostitutesherselfwith her own sex'. In this case, the interpretationis
again decidedly conservative:it simply shows that she will have a child.
However,a 'fruitful'womanhavingthe same dreamwouldhave 'muchpain
in bearingher children'.In an example typicalof the way in which chap-
book materialwas repeated acrosstitles and acrossmany years, this same
interpretationoccursin the New InfallibleFortuneTellerof 1818,but with
slightly less confrontinglanguage: 'For a barren woman to dream she
embracesone of her own sex, denotes that in time she will have children;
but to a fruitfulwomanit denotes pain and sorrowin childbearing'.24 Such
interpretationspositionthe meaningof dreamsoutsidethe workingsof the
mind,implyingan externalset of forcesthatwill decidedestiny.Yet in many
nineteenth-centurydreaminterpetations,messagesof individualresponsi-
bility and the benefits of hard work can also be found, alongsidereassur-
ances about external determination.Here the role of the dream book is
ambivalentand complex,like muchpopularculture,seemingto both chal-
lenge andvalidatethe existingorder.Several'dreamers'signalon theirtitle
pages that they containthe interpretationof dreams'by the most ancientas
well as the most modernRules of Philosophy'.Popularliteraturewas, after
all, a commodity,and as such it was profitableto leave it open to as many
interpretationsas possible.
In the case of dreambooks, ambivalencewas almostcertainlyconnected
with the conflict between predominantlymiddle-class disapproval of
predictionand plebeian fascinationwith it. As I have argued elsewhere,
nineteenth-centuryreformers,of both Whig and radical persuasion,dis-
approvedof attemptsby those at the meanest levels of society to foretell
the future.25For a middle-classWhigsuch a belief was an offence to ration-
ality,flyingin the face of all that was known about the steady progression
of time. For a radicalsuch as Henry Hetheringtonor RichardCarlilesuch
a belief locked its victiminto the hopelessnessof a predeterminedfuture,
negatingany effort to create social and politicalchange.For the evangeli-
cal HannahMore it was also againstreligion.In one of her populartracts,
TawnyRachel,she warned'allyou youngmen andmaidens'against:'cheats,
impostors, cunning women, fortune-tellers, conjurers, and interpreters of
dreams',because'God never revealsto weak and wickedwomen the secret

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 TheMeaningof DreamBooks 109

designs of his providence',so 'to consult these false oracles is not only
foolishbut sinful'.26Dreambooks andfortune-tellingbooks, then,were dis-
approvedof by all those who sought to bringeducationand improvement
to the labouringclasses.
Thereis more to the unrespectabilityof dreambooks, however,thandis-
approvalof superstitiousbeliefs or of fatalism.Dreamingis a notoriously
atemporalactivity,and any belief in the predictivecapacityof dreamsis a
challenge to the fixed regularity of time. Many fortune-tellingbooks,
'dreamers'amongstthem, includedlists of fortunateand unfortunatedays
in the year to come, implyingthat the passage of time was not equal:the
quality of days differed, even if the number of hours did not. As many
studies of popularbelief have shown, certain days, especially those con-
nected with the ecclesiasticalyear, were imbuedwith specialsignificance.27
These were given similarimportancein dreambooks. The Golden Cabinet
or the Compleat Fortune-Teller of 1795 instructed the hopeful dreamer:

On St. Valentine'sDay, take two bay leaves, sprinklethem with rose

water,the eveningof this day lay them acrossyour pillow.Whenyou go
to bed, puttingon a clean shift turnedwrongside outwards,and laying
down, say these wordssoftly to yourself.
Good Valentinebe kind to me,
In dreamslet me my true Love see.
So crossingyour legs, go to sleep as fast as you can, and you will see in
yourdreamthe partyyou are to wed come to yourbedside,andofferyou
all the modest kindnessimaginable.

Many of the charms and incantationsdesigned to reveal a forthcoming

husbanddependedfor theirefficacyon being carriedout on particulardays
of the year. Rules were publishedby whichinterpretationof the character
of childrenmightbe made accordingto whatdaysof the calendarthey were
bornon, referringto the age of the moon. Certaindayswere good for trav-
ellingon, othersnot. These chapbookswere still appearingandstill a highly
popularform of street literature,when standardized'universaltime' was
being promotedat governmentand internationallevel (in conferenceslike
the 1884 Prime MeridianConferenceand the 1912 InternationalConfer-
ence on Time), and when a uniformmethodfor determiningaccuratetime
signals and transmittingthem aroundthe world was being established.28
This is a very differenteconomic context from that of chapbooks.In the
modernworld,setting out on a journeycould not wait for lunaraspectsor
a propitiousdate.
Although women's association with dreamingwas linked to medical
constructionsof physiologicaldisturbance,the widely-acceptedconnection
between women and 'superstitious'belief generallywas more complex.As
scorn became the dominant way in which the educated elite regarded
beliefs about prediction,a link was forged between superstitionand lack

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110 HistoryWorkshopJournal

of education. Contemporaries regarded fortune-telling as something

resorted to by the lower orders. Dreams and Moles, its title page pro-
claimed,was designedto appealto 'the very meanest Capacities'.As liter-
acy and education advanced throughoutthe eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries,the natureof chapbooksdid not greatlychange (with the excep-
tion of almanacs). Content was still about courtship,marriage,and the
chances of good fortune. However, whereas the earlier versions had
occasionallyaddresseda male reader, men as potential readers seem to
have disappearedby the end of the century,and the genre was targeted
entirely at women. One assumptiondemonstratedby compilerswas that
the least educated,the least literate,and thereforethe least discriminating
were most likely to be women.Whenreformerscampaignedagainstsuper-
stition, they frequentlyreferredto the need to protect women from their
own gullibility.It was part of this scenarioto present those most likely to
suffer as being amongst the poorest in society. In Wilkie Collins'sbest-
seller, TheWomanin White,it is the low-bornAnne Catherick,illegitimate
child of a maidservant,who tries to warn Laura Fairlie by relating a
propheticdream:'Do you believe in dreams?I hope, for your own sake,
that you do'.
It may be that some women's lack of education predisposedthem to
irrationalbelief, althoughthe existenceof highly-educatedreadersof dream
books problematizessuch a simple explanation.Hesba Stretton (1832-
1911),later chief writerof tractfictionfor the ReligiousTractSociety,slept
with a dream-bookunder her pillow at the age of twenty-eight.29And
whereas the thrust of the legislation against fortune-tellingwas against
vagrants,implying that perpetratorswould probably be vagabondslike
Hannah More's TawnyRachel, 'a famous interpreterof dreams',records
suggest that prosecutions were brought largely against settled, even
respectablepractitioners.It is impossible,of course, to evaluate to what
extent the purchasersof these little books believed or acted on their con-
tents, and some may even have bought them simplyfor a laugh, as some
present-daypurchasersof Old Moore'sAlmanac no doubt do. Amongst
Pepys's collection of chapbooks is Mother Bunch's Closet, 30 which claims
its authoras 'yourlovingfriend,poorTom',one of thatlargefamilyof 'poor'
authorswho signalled,for those who understood,that here was a work of
satire.31
One very practicalreason for women's interest in books of fate may
have been a culturalrole as guardiansof the calendar.Women were the
most likely purchasersof almanacs,for reasons that we can only guess,
perhapsto do in part with the timing of menstrualcycles and pregnancy.
The lists of lucky and unluckydays in fortune-tellingbooks may well have
fallen into this role of forwardplanningin the home, and point to an area
of influencein the privatesphere over the timing of journeys.As with so
muchaboutpopularcultureand popularliterature,the questionsraisedby
these books far exceed our capacityto answerthem.Whywas theircontent

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 TheMeaningof DreamBooks 111

so little concernedwith friendship,or health?Why are the fortune-tellers

consultedin their illustrationsand anecdotesnearly alwayswomen, when
most prosecutions seem to have been of men? However, one thing is
certain. Women'sreadershipof books of fate and dream books was not
only a demonstrationof gullibility.Those areasof life where some women,
perhapschieflyyoungwomen,experiencedthe most anxietyare clearlysig-
nalled, as well as ways in which they tried to exercise some control over
implementingtheir dearestwishes.
Freud'srevolutionaryachievementwas to take a widely-knownfeature
of popularcultureand to turn it around,so that by the early years of the
twentiethcenturymost educatedpeople believed that dreamsreferrednot
to the future but to the past. The final paragraphof The Interpretationof
Dreamsrefersagainto popularbelief:

And the value of dreamsfor givingus knowledgeof the future?There is

of course no questionof that. It would be truerto say insteadthat they
give us knowledgeof the past. For dreamsare derivedfrom the past in
every sense. Nevertheless the ancient belief that dreams foretell the
futureis not wholly devoid of truth.But his future,which the dreamer
picturesas the present,has been mouldedby his ... wish into a perfect
likenessof the past.

In Freud'ssummary,the representativedreamerhasbeen transformedfrom

the womanfor whomdream-bookcompilerswrote,to a universalman.Yet
in clinicalpracticeFreud'semphasison women perpetuatedthe common
belief that women were a fertile source of repressed wishes. Freud's
relationshipto popularbelief was one of both continuityand rupture:his
insightsinto dreams built on centuries of belief that dreamingwas con-
nected with the innermostdesiresandfears,not solely with the discomforts
of the body;but he broke with traditionin removingthe interpretationof
dreamsfromits importantplace in the privatecultureof women.In appro-
priating it for psychoanalyticalinvestigation, he conferred important
rationalstatus,buthe removedan areaof agencythatgenerationsof women
had claimedas their own.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

The research for this piece was undertaken while the writer held a British Library
Fellowhip, and she would like to express thanks for their assistance.
1 Harold Bloom (ed.), Sigmund Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams', Chelsea House,
New York, 1987, p. 1. Bloom here chooses to interpret traumdeutung as dream book, presum-
ably in allusion to the chapbook genre, rather than using the more familiar translation, 'the
interpretation of dreams'. The implication is that Freud's choice of word referred to the older
tradition.
2 To judge from references in the nineteenth-century British periodical press, French and

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112 HistoryWorkshopJournal

Germandreambooks were well known;but there do not appearto be any modem studiesof
theircontentor readership.Salesof dreambooksin Britainwerecloselylinkedwithalmanacs
andbroadsheetsin the earlynineteenthcentury,but these latterpublicationswerereplacedby
calendarsand newspapersin the secondhalf of the century.See MaureenPerkins,Visionsof
the Future:Almanacs,Time,and CulturalChange1775-1870,ClarendonPress,Oxford,1996.
3 SigmundFreud, 'On Dreams' (1901), in SigmundFreud, The Essentialsof Psycho-
Analysis, trans. James Strachey,selected and introducedby Anna Freud, HogarthPress,
London,1986,p. 83.
4 The Golden Dreamer,or Dreamer'sInterpreter, clearlyshowinghow all thingsPast,
Presentand to come may be ascertainedby meansof Dreams,Newcastleupon Tyne,no date
(BritishLibrarycataloguesuggests1850).
5 S. R. F. Price,'The Futureof Dreams:FromFreudto Artemidorus',Pastand Present
113,November1986,pp. 3-37.
6 JamesGuest,'A free press,andhow it becamefree',in WilliamHutton,TheHistoryof
Birmingham,Birmingham,1861,quoted in Joel H. Wiener,The Warof the Unstamped:the
Movementto Repealthe BritishNewspaperTax,1830-1836,CornellUniversityPress,Ithaca,
N.Y., 1969,p. 17.
7 The TrueFortuneTeller,Edinburgh,1850,p. 24.
8 TonyJames,Dream,Creativity, and Madnessin Nineteenth-Century France,Clarendon
Press,Oxford,1995.
9 Smithson'sNorthallerton Almanack,March1899.
10 The Trialof JosephPowell,London,1808.
11 FrankSeafield, The Literatureand Curiositiesof Dreams:A CommonplaceBook or
SpeculationsConcerningthe Mysteryof Dreamsand Visions,2 vols, London,1865,vol. 1, p.
134.
12 DreamsandMoles.A collectionof choice... receiptsconcerningloveandmarriage.First
compiledin Greek,and now renderedinto Englishby a Fellowof the RoyalSociety,London,
1750,p. 23.
13 The Dreamer'sOracle,being a faithfulinterpretation of two hundreddreams,Derby,
1830.
14 TerryCastle, TheFemaleThermometer: Eighteenth-centuryCultureand the Invention
of the Uncanny,OxfordUniversityPress,New York,1995,p. 175.
15 MargaretSpufford,SmallBooksandPleasantHistories:PopularFictionanditsReader-
ship in Seventeenth-Century England,Methuen,London,1981,chap.7; SaraMendelsonand
PatriciaCrawford,Womenin EarlyModernEngland1550-1720,ClarendonPress, Oxford,
1998,p. 111.
16 Alex Owen, TheDarkenedRoom:Women,Power,and Spiritualismin Late Victorian
England,Universityof PennsylvaniaPress,Philadelphia,1990,p. 2.
17 Chambers's Journal53:630 (4th series),22 Jan.1876,pp. 56-59.
18 C. Binz, Uberden Traum,Bonn, 1878,p. 35, cited in Freud,TheEssentialsof Psycho-
Analysis,p. 82.
19 Blackwood'sMagazine48, August,1840,pp. 194-204.
20 Althoughmost of the enormousliteratureon dreamswas writtenby men, even those
who acknowledgedthatprophecymightplay a partin some dreamswere usuallyambivalent.
For an excellentoverviewof nineteenth-century opinionsaboutdreams,see MerleCurti,'The
AmericanExplorationof DreamsandDreamers',Journalof theHistoryof Ideas27, 1966,pp.
391-416(of interestnot only in an Americancontext).Curticoncludesfroma surveyof eight-
eenth-centuryAmerican colonists' diaries that: '[T]he best known diaristsmerely report
dreams[and]reflecton the risingfashionin Europeto discounttheirimportance'(p. 393).
21 Chambers's Journal2:62,6 April 1833,entryon 'Dreams',pp. 77-8.
22 WilkieCollins,TheWomanin White(1860),Oxford,1949,p. 27.
23 Dreamsand Moles,1750,p. 11.
24 TheNew InfallibleFortuneTeller,or a justinterpretation
of DreamsandMoles,to which
are added,rulesto foretellthe Weather;drawnup from the strictobservanceof nearlyhalf a
century,Edinburgh,1818,pp. 12-13.
25 Perkins,Visionsof theFuture,pp. 61, 65.
26 'Z' [HannahMore],TawnyRachel,or theFortuneTeller;withsome accountof dreams,
omensand conjurers,CheapRepositoryfor Religiousand MoralTracts,no. 17, London,no
date (BritishLibrarycataloguesuggests1797),p. 15.
27 KeithThomas,ReligionandtheDeclineof Magic:Studiesin PopularBeliefsin Sixteenth

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 TheMeaningof DreamBooks 113

andSeventeenthCenturyEngland,WeidenfeldandNicolson,London,1971;JamesObelkevich,
ReligionandRuralSociety:SouthLindsey,1825-1875,ClarendonPress,Oxford,1976;Ronald
Hutton,TheStationsof theSun:a Historyof theRitualYearin Britain,OxfordUniversityPress,
New York,1997.
28 StephenKern has trackedthe processby which 'universaltime' was promoted:The
Cultureof Timeand Space1880-1918,HarvardUniversityPress,Cambridge,Mass.,1983,pp.
12-13.
29 N. M. Cutts,MinisteringAngels:A Studyof Nineteenth-CenturyEvangelicalsWritingfor
Children,Five OwlsPress,Herts,1979,p. 117.Mythanksto Dr Sue Rickardfor thisreference.
30 Spufford,SmallBooks, p. 61.
31 See Perkins,Visionsof theFuture,chap.4.

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