Cecil Dreeme

The author of this gothic tale was one of the first Union soldiers to lose his life in the Civil War. His semi-autobiographical novel focuses on a young traveler, Robert Byng, who, returning to New York from many years abroad, occupies an absent friend’s flat. With the assistance of an old mentor, he saves the life of a reclusive painter on the floor above him. A close friendship ensues. Byng courts Emma Denman, a beautiful heiress whose intellectual sister has disappeared, presumed drowned. His