Hidden in a Dream is the sixth book in the Romney Marsh series of novels by Monica Edwards

Monica Edwards

Monica Edwards was an English children's writer of the mid-twentieth century best known for her Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm series of children's novels.-Early life:...

, published in 1952 by Collins

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

. After suffering concussion when swimming on his own near Winklesea beach, Meryon is haunted by disturbing dreams. An abandoned pony and trap is discovered and the Grey family decides to live in the Martello Tower when Mr Grey
temporarily changes place with another vicar.

Passage from First Edition

One just doesn't expect to find a pony and trap abandoned with absolutely no trace of the owner. Tamzin and Rissa couldn't understand it at all. And what had Meryon to do with it? Something, obviously, because ever since he had fallen and stunned himself on the breakwater, finding himself unable to remember how it had happened, he had been moody and quite unlike his usual carefree self. The most casual remarks would send him off into strange, brooding silences, and when they thought about it, they realised that the conversation had usually had something to do with the missing stranger. The most frightening thing, though, was the way he talked in his sleep. It was such fun for the three of them and Roger to be sleeping out on the roof of the old Martello Tower where they were camping with Tamzin's mother and young Diccon; the wind-swept expanses of the Romney Marshes lay all about them and they should have slept deeply, waking only to the early sun, but night after night Meryon disturbed them by tossing about and crying out in fear. Yet in the morning he obviously knew nothing of what had happened.
Each day was crammed so full that it was hard to find time to investigate the mystery: the tower had to be got ready for camping and then kept clean and tidy; food had to be fetched and cooked; the ponies cared for; the Church Social arranged with an entertainment from each of them; an eye had to be kept on old Jim the ferryman and his perilous attempts to ride a bicycle; and there was the locum parson and his family to be installed at the Vicarage. But strange clues kept cropping up, and it became more and more obvious that Meryon alone could give them the answer if only they could discover the secret of his dreams.

Subsequent editions

• Children’s Book Club - 1953
• Collins 6/- edition - 1955
• Collins Evergreen Library - 1966, 1969
• Engelbert (Bücherei) - 1974. German hardback translation: Ferien voller Abenteuer
• John Goodchild - 1986 New edition (Updated by author) illustrated by Sheila Ratcliffe
• Girls Gone By Publishers
  Girls Gone By Publishers
  Girls Gone By Publishers is a publishing company run by Clarissa Cridland and Ann Mackie-Hunter and is based in Bath, Somerset. They re-publish new editions of some of the most popular girls' fiction titles from the twentieth century.-Elinor Brent-Dyer:...
  
  reprint of original - 2006