Dreams of To-day

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Hard cover, 8vo., in publisher's teal blue decorative cloth binding blocked with green and gold floral decoration of water lilies in a twining art deco style, top edge gilt, others untrimmed, on laid paper, with tissue-guarded frontispiece illustration, 264pp., First edition in book form. Printed by R. R. Donnelley & Sons, at The Lakeside Press, Chicago for Way and Williams, MDCCCXCVII. Condition: Very Good Plus. Cover design show some rubbing and dulling to the gold and a bit along the front joint and at head and foot of the spine. Inside, book is unwritten in, clean and fresh. Hinges in order. ** A collection of fin-de-siècle short story vignettes or prose-poems telling of one "Cecil Fenmyske" and his increasingly detailed glimpses of a fantastical existence beyond the quotidian realities of the domestic daily grind. Containing fifteen stories, the final tale, "The White City's Dream" comes close to being a sketch of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", or perhaps something out of Lord Dunsany's fantasy world. Note: The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was nicknamed the "White City" due to the color of the buildings' façades; in the story, the girl of his dream is from Chicago. ****English-German born Author John Percival Pollard (1869-1911) emigrated to Iowa with his family in 1885, settling in Chicago. He was a close friend and advocate for the author, Ambrose Bierce. [Please also see our listing no. 8867 for Pollard's "Cape of Fear."] **Book design artist Frank Nankivell's cover reminds one of the Stranger Things world of the "upside down;" with the water surface and flower directions in opposition to their natural occurrence. Artist Orson Lowell's frontispiece similarly breaks a realistic boundary in setting his collotype among line-drawn flowers. These may be interpretations of the boundary-breaking romantic yearnings of the main character. **Chicago publisher Way and Williams is mentioned in Will Ransom's Private Presses and their Books (1929) as the publishers in 1897 of the Kelmscott Press's "Hand and Soul" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, (reprinted from "The Germ" magazine) with limited edition copies for distribution both in England and America; "Even the Kelmscott Press produced an edition for Way and Williams with a Chicago imprint, but it should be noted that the publishers bought the book and the bookmaking of Morris's choice instead of engaging him to carry out their wishes."** OCLC 2563111. Wright 4278. See Ransom "Kelmscott" 36, p.329, pp. 17-18. Very Scarce. Seller Inventory # 8970

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