Bob Blaisdell 
Dreams: A Literary Anthology 
William Blake, Charlotte Bronte, Sigmund Freud, Homer, Helen Keller and Others

The mysterious power of dreams has always fascinated humanity. Theories of interpretation, meaning, and symbolism have varied, yet their intrigue remains eternal. This captivating anthology of dreams represents the experiences of great authors and characters as well as their nighttime wanderings, awakened through passages from the Bible, classical Greek literature, novels, memoirs, essays, philosophy, psychology, and poetry. It explores perspectives both critical and in awe of dreaming’s incredible narrative potential, offering readers an enlightening glimpse into timeless nocturnal musings that can reveal a writer’s most intimate self through nightmare and comedy alike! This original collection contains selections from Louisa May Alcott, the Brontë sisters, G. K. Chesterton, Cicero, René Descartes, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sigmund Freud, Homer, Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other dreamers.

Table of Content

Introduction



I. Novels and Short Stories

Anonymous: The Arabian Nights

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre 

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights 

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Anton Chekhov, “Sleepy”

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Nikolai Gogol, “The Portrait”

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Franz Kafka, “A Country Doctor” 

Guy de Maupassant, “The Horla”

Alexander Pushkin, “The Coffin-Maker” 

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin 

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina 



II. Mythology, History, and Religion

The Bible: Joseph, the Dream-Interpreter (The Book of Genesis) 

The Bible: Daniel as Interpreter of King Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream (The Book of Daniel) 

The Bible: Dreams in the Life of Jesus (The Book of Matthew) 

Euripides, Hecuba 

Herodotus, Histories 

Homer, The Iliad 

Homer, The Odyssey

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Sophocles, Oedipus the King



III. Philosophy and Psychology

Anonymous, The Questions of King Milinda 

Mary Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams 

Thomas Browne, Religio Medici 

Cicero, On Divination

René Descartes, The Meditations

Sigmund Freud, On Dreams

Socrates, Phaedo

Voltaire, “Of Dreams”

Zhuangzi (also known as Chuang Tzu), Zhuangzi



IV. Poetry and Drama

Louisa May Alcott, “Mary’s Dream” 

Matthew Arnold, “Longing” 

William Blake, “A Dream” and “The Land of Dreams”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment” 

Emily Dickinson, “In Winter in my Room” and “I Years had been from Home” 

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), “At Baia”

Amy Lowell, “I had made a kite”

Edgar Allan Poe, “Dream-Land” and “A Dream Within a Dream” 

Ezra Pound, “To Καλὸν” 

William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Arthur Symons, “Dreams” 



V. Memoirs and Essays

Ambrose Bierce, “Visions of the Night”

G. K. Chesterton, “Dreams” 

Dante, The New Life (La Vita Nuova)

Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium-Eater

Charles Dickens, “Night Walks” 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Demonology”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe

Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Tolstoy 

William Hazlitt, “On Dreams” 

William Dean Howells, “I Talk of Dreams” 

Jerome K. Jerome, “Dreams”

Samuel Johnson, Life of Johnson by James Boswell

Helen Keller, The World I Live In 

Charles Lamb, “Witches, and Other Night-Fears” 

Michel de Montaigne, Essays 

John Ruskin, “On Carpaccio’s Dream of Saint Ursula” 

Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Chapter on Dreams”



Selected Bibliography