The Substance of a Dream

Francis William Bain (1863-1940) was a British writer of fantasy stories that he claimed were translated from Sanskrit. The first of these was A Digit of the Moon (1898), which he claimed was his translation of the eighth part of sixteen of a Sanskrit manuscript given to him by a brahmin. During his life, argument raged about whether the story was truly a translation or whether Bain had written it himself. Bain was for a number of years a fellow of All Souls College at Oxford, and then a professor of History in the Deccan College of Pune, in British India, until his retirement in 1919. His other works include: Christina of Sweden (1890), The English Monarchy (1893), Body and Soul (1894), A Digit of the Moon (1899), Essence of the Dusk (1906), A Syrup of the Bees (1914), The Livery of Eve (1917) and The Substance of a Dream (1917).