STORR, Catherine (author). Marjorie-Ann WATTS (illustrator). Marianne Dreams. London; Faber And Faber Ltd. 1958.

8vo. Original green cloth lettered in red to spine, in pictorial dustwrapper; pp. [vi], 7-191; illustrated in black and white by Marjorie-Ann Watts; with some restoration of green cover dye, with some resultant mottling to cloth on lower board to mask colour-loss (a seemingly unavoidable issue with this publication due to the fugitive dye used), internally near fine in a clean, and complete, example of the price-clipped dustwrapper which has some dust-soiling to spine and lower panel, light creasing to the same, and one short closed tear to spine head; a remarkably scarce book, especially in such an attractive dustwrapper.

First edition.   A powerful psychological novel by Catherine Storr [Baroness Balogh) and a juvenile classic. It inspired several adaptations to screen including a 1972 British ITV TV series called “Escape Into Night”, which was quite faithful to the novel, and a movie “Paperhouse”, which was less so. The author herself adapted it as an opera libretto in 1999, which was performed in 2004 with music by the British composed Andrew Lowe Watson.

Catherine Storr (1913-2001) was frustrated in her early attempts to forge a career as a novelist and turned instead to one  in medicine, graduating as a doctor in 1944 and continuing her training to become a paediatric psychiatrist. This training informed her work on this deeply psychological work which is often also classified as fantasy or even science fiction.

Marianne, the main protagonist, is a young girl confined to bed with a serious illness. To amuse herself she begins to draw and finds her pencilled imaginings take vivid form in her dreams. She finds herself increasingly living in her pictures, which give Freudian insight into her fears, insecurities and guilt. In her alternative world she meets Mark, another real-life bedridden boy who is taught by her private tutor, and Marianne’s control over her pencil conjures a shared dream reality for them both, encompassing internal and external threats.

No first editions, or even vintage copies, in any condition, located on the commercial market at the time of cataloguing.