This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.
The influence of drugs on literary output is in evidence throughout the Santo Domingo Collection, but the volume pictured here wears that influence with unusual prominence: pictured on the publisher’s book-cloth binding is a cluster of opium poppies. In case the reader isn’t horticulturally inclined, the title of the work is Dreams, or, Lessons from the poppy fields. (The title on the cover is Dreams, by a dreamer; bibliographic research identifies the dreamer as author Nettie Elizabeth Bryson.) Perhaps surprisingly, the text itself makes no explicit mention of opium or its effects, but the dreamlike narrative, treading a path somewhere between philosophy and melodrama, bears the poppy’s mark as well.
Dreams, or Lessons from the poppy fields. New York: Alliance Publishing Co., 1901. PS3503.R967 D7 1901.
Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.
I love the illustration! Beautiful.