Book Dreams

Last night I dreamt of Wingfield Park, a thousand-page Trollope novel published in 1861. I got no further than this information, and found out even less about Lord Grey, the book beside it on the shelf in the sitting-room of the little seaside caravan I found myself in. Both were substantial 1990s World's Classics paperback editions - pale lemon spines with pictures. I remember being disappointed by Wingfield Park's publication date. I prefer later Trollope.

From time to time I also dream of a lost Anita Brookner, published in some other universe between, say, Visitors and Falling Slowly. It has a photographic cover. I have the book in my hand, open it - and wake up.

Even less graspable is that early Victorian author whose name I can never remember. A lesser George Eliot, a lesser Trollope, but a prolific source of reading pleasure all the same. In dream after dream I take down his books and start to enter into his world - rural, bourgeois, endless.