A variety of literary dreams written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries show us that writing about dreams opens up imagined worlds for writers and readers. Lord Byron, poet of "The Dream," wrote that

Sleep hath it's own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy. (lines 3 - 6)

From the scientific to the subjective, ideas about dreams permeate our lives and our literature. In this literary exhibit, we discuss dreamworlds that exude inspiration, imagination, and mystery. They cover a range of topics that explore the ways literary dreams describe sleep's "own world." While the inherent nature of dreams has remained constant, dreams and the unconscious mind have been examined and treated differently from one historical era to the next. Writers have often used dreams as a source of inspiration and a basis for formal experimeneation. In nineteenth- and twentieth- century literature, creative boundaries and literary forms are extended and illuminated by the modern dream.