ABSTRACT
J. W. Dunne’s theory of time and dreams was taken up by literary authors working in a variety of genres and reaching different audiences. This chapter considers works published between 1928 and 1937 by five British authors who engaged with Dunne’s ideas. William Empson, Arnold Bennett, John Buchan, Mary Butts and J. B. Priestley put pressure on Dunne’s optimistic vision of ‘the unity of all flesh in the Superbody and of all minds in the Master-mind’, as they explored the discomforts of prevision and the problem of free will that it entailed. In doing so, they redefined precognition as a problem of gender and generation, giving it a bearing on heredity and the reproduction of the heterosexual order. As Dunne’s serial time found its way into works of fiction between the wars, his blithe articulation of ‘parent and child’ as the foundation for precognition, human survival, and divine reality was implicated in problems of marriage, procreation and inheritance.
