Special Collections
Book of the Month, January 2006
Notebook containing records of dreams and visions with interpretation
MS 913B/2/2
Among the De Morgan Family Papers (MS913) there is a notebook (MS 913B/2/2) used by Sophia De Morgan (1809–1892) to record descriptions of her dreams and also dreams had by her daughter Mary Augusta (1850–1907). In many of the dreams Mary recounts dreams which feature her sister Elizabeth Alice, who died in 1853, such as the following description dating from November 1856:
‘I was walking under a tree like an acacia; the large leaves branched out and bent over so as to make a kind of arch. Till I came to a very curious house or hall...(Elizabeth) Alice gave me the explanation. The two trees on each side represent the spiritual wood growing into this world’.
The notebook was written circa 1856 and therefore represents an example of spiritualist research from the very beginnings of the modern spiritualist movement in the UK. In 1853 the first Spiritualist Church was established in theBritish Isles at Keighley in Yorkshire, and in 1855 the first Spiritualist newspaper in Britain, The Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph, was published.
Sophia De Morgan was actively interested in spiritualism and in 1863 her book From matter to spirit: The result of ten years' experience in spirit manifestations was published. This book was an account of communications from “beyond” based partly on ideas promoted by the scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772).
The notebook underlines the diverse nature of the contents of MS913, which relates not only to the work of the mathematician Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871), but also to the activities and interests of his wife Sophia, their son the potter and novelist William De Morgan (1839-1917), and other descendants.
The notebook was catalogued in September 2005, and cataloguing of the De Morgan Family Papers was completed in December 2005. The results are now accessible on the Library's Archives & Manuscripts on-line catalogue
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