The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

[The images for this folder are not currently available.]

This leather-bound book contains a nine-page fable written by Madeleine Edison entitled "River of Dreams." Madeleine gave the book to her mother, Mina Miller Edison, on July 6, 1907, on the occasion of her forty-second birthday. An inscription by Madeleine on the first page states that she wrote the story two years earlier but that "you are the first to read it, and although Bryn Mawr English has thrown a search-light on its failings I have left it very much as it was originally—bad English and all." The book is illustrated with hand-colored drawings by Madeleine on every page. There is also a five-page fable, written on the same paper but not bound into the book, that bears the date of July 6, 1908. The first fable tells the story of a princess whose love for a prince named Ambition eventually leads to her death. The second relates the tale of a hermit's adopted son who longs to go out into the world. On the last page is a sonnet dated May 11, 1907.