Soldier, pioneer aviator, dry fly fisherman, prophetic dreamer and philosopher. Living from 1875 to 1949 and famous from 1910 until the postwar era, nowadays few have heard of J W Dunne. Yet he laid the foundations of many things that we today take for granted, not least the stable aeroplane and the hard science of parapsychology research. There is much else too that he deserves to be remembered for.

The few published accounts of him are full of mistakes, delusions and outright fairy-tales, spun in desperation to fill the void in what little we have really known. Archives held in many places, especially his own personal papers acquired by the Science Museum in 2015, have a very different and far more electrifying tale to tell.

News

On Dreamtime with Gary Lachman – Link to an interview by Jah Billah. – 27 September 2023.

Sunshine and the Dry Fly: 2024 Centenary Extended Edition – Forthcoming for the start of 2024. – 28 August 2023.

Culture and J W Dunne – Referencing Dunne throughout the last century. – 8 April 2023.

Writings, Published and Unpublished – A list of published and unpublished works, and some other salient notes and correspondence. – 19 Feb 2023.

Four Forgotten Flies – New variations intended for the Second Edition of Sunshine and the Dry Fly, but never made it. – 10 Dec 2021.

Editions of An Experiment with Time – Which is the best edition to get? Here are my suggestions, now updated with the full list. – 5 Nov 2021.

Forthcoming biography

I have been researching and writing his biography for several years now. Lifelong aero and science enthusiast, sometime student of philosophy, marginally better amateur mathematician, professional non-specialist and scion of that same dying socio-military upper middle class which once ran an Empire, I feel more qualified than most to understand the man and his work and to tackle head-on the broad, eclectic intellectual challenge of getting under his skin, the better to tell his tale.

At the time of writing (April 2023) the text is finished and I am compiling an Index file. I have given up on trying to get any publisher, or even an agent, to respond to any approaches whatsoever. The Science Museum is similarly uninterested in making its many historic photographs and other illustrations available to mere mortals. So I now plan to self-publish a plain edition. It will at least make his amazing story available and might even goad somebody into action. If you have any queries - or best of all you are a literary agent or publisher - feel free to contact me.

General J W Dunne: The Forgotten Genius – Brief biopic. J W Dunne: Myths and Muddles – Eleven things you thought you knew. Writings, Published and Unpublished – A list of published and unpublished works, and some other salient notes and correspondence. Culture and J W Dunne – Referencing Dunne throughout the last century. Dunne's business papers and related objects are now held at the Science Museum's Archive Centre, Wroughton, UK. They were bought in 2015 for £38,000, following a £15,000 grant from the Friends of the National Libraries (FNL). I estimate there must be at least 20,000 individual documents and objects, some of them whole books. The Museum has published a first (and still incomplete) summary of them.

Science Museum archives Papers of John William Dunne:Top level description Aviation papers: Summary details – Collection Contents List (pdf) Publications material: Summary details – Collection Contents List (pdf) Fishing material: Summary details – Collection Contents List (pdf)

Aircraft

• The Aircraft of J W Dunne – As definitive a list as can be drawn from contemporary documents.
• Dunne Aircraft Recognition – How to tell one from another.
• J W Dunne Aeronauticalia – Historical glimpses of his aeroplane activities.
• Aeronautical Myths and Muddles – Thirteen things you thought you knew about J W Dunne's aeroplanes.
• UK Patent No. 8118 of 1909 (pdf) – Original patent on the stable tailless swept and delta wings.
• The Theory of the Dunne Aeroplane (pdf) – Lecture to the Aeronautical Society in 1913, as reprinted in Flight, 16 Aug to 13 Sept 1913.

For the early Farnborough Balloon Factory tale, the second volume of Percy Walker's monumental Early Aviation at Farnborough is unparalleled. Dunne's subsequent aircraft are fairly well chronicled in the pages of Flight. Among general histories, the least tainted accounts are probably Peter Lewis British Aircraft 1809-1914 and Harald Penrose British Aviation: The Pioneer Years 1903-1914, although Penrose is overly troubled by the monoplane fancies. Avoid modern accounts!

If you happen to be in the neighbourhood of Trenton, Canada, there is a full-size replica of a Burgess-Dunne seaplane at the National Air Force Museum.

Fly fishing

• Sunshine and the Dry Fly: 2024 Centenary Extended Edition – New edition of his seminal work, forthcoming for the start of 2024.
• Fly Fishing Trivia – A collection of published references to his fishing, his dry files and their use.
• Four Forgotten Flies – New variations intended for the Second Edition of Sunshine and the Dry Fly, but never made it.

I know of no readily accessible commentary on his fly-fishing works although many writers, from GEM Skues to Arthur Ransome and Jeremy Paxman, have acknowledged him. "The Fly on the Water" originally appeared in WA Hunter's anthology Fisherman's Pie. If you are extremely lucky, you may be able to find someone with a limited-edition copy of Griffiths, Overfield & Knott; Dry Flies in the Sunshine: J. W. Dunne and His Dry Fly Patterns from Creel Press.

Serialism What is Serialism? – The broader perspective on his philosophy of time and consciousness. Editions of An Experiment with Time – Which is the best edition to get? It's a tricky question. Here is the full list, with my recommendations. The Serial Quantum – Some aspects of serialism are still relevant to modern physics. Serial Time and the Differential Calculus – Could schoolkid maths have got Dunne out of some of the corners he painted himself into? Dunne Dreams – Science or Pseudoscience? – Sceptics can do bad science too. The Last Battle: J W Dunne in Narnia – Extract from the full article in Mythlore. Serialism is discussed with at least a semblance of reason by JB Priestley in Man and Time, by Brian Inglis in his introduction to the 1981 Papermac edition of An Experiment with Time and by Russell Targ in his preface to the 2001 Hampton Roads edition of the same work. Philosophers may pursue contemporary references to Broad, Cleugh, Gunn, Tyrrell and, not long after Dunne's death, the acerbic Flew. Less academically respectable but nonetheless intriguing takes have been offered in more recent times by Sean O'Donnell in The Paranormal Explained and Anthony Peake in The Labyrinth of Time. On the literary side, Serialism's influence on Tolkien and to some extent on CS Lewis is explored by Verlyn Flieger in A Question of Time: JRR Tolkien's Road to Faërie. Academics may seek out Victoria Stewart's papers, "J. W. Dunne and Literary Culture in the 1930s and 1940s", Literature and History (2008) and "An Experiment with Narrative? Rumer Godden's A Fugue in Time", Rumer Godden: International and Intermodern Storyteller (2010). Most recently, Gennady Barabtarlo has edited Vladimir Nabokov's Dunne-inspired notes to create an account of his Insomniac Dreams. Works of popular fiction which reference Dunne are legion. From John Buchan's The Gap in the Curtain and HG Wells' The Shape of Things to Come, through JB Priestley's plays such as Time and the Conways, to the likes of James Blish's Jack of Eagles and A Bertram Chandler's Kelly Country, he has remained a popular inspiration.

Related Blocki posts Precognition? Perhaps Schrödinger's Serial Cat Elsewhere kitt price has created a blog at J.W. Dunne: dreaming the future, to which you are invited to contribute. Francis Spufford's BBC Radio 3 broadcast, I Have Been here before, on JB Priestley and Dunne, is well worth a listen. If you like podcasts, here are some which introduce various aspects of Serialism: An Inspector Calls - GCSE English Literature Text - An STS View. Lecture by Charlotte Sleigh, professor of Science and Technology Studies, UCL, on Dunne and Priestley, 2013. The Spacetime of Dreams. Lecture by Christopher White, professor and chair of the religion department at Vassar College, USA, on Dunne and Priestley, 2018. On Dreamtime with Gary Lachman. Interview by Jah Billah, 14 Feb 2022. The first part discusses Dunne. The Afterlife: Part 6 J W Dunne – An Experiment with Time. A summary by oldmanssecret. An Experiment with Time J W Dunne Introduction Part 1. Introduction to the Third Edition, read by Dan Zurch. J W Dunne - The Father of Serialism. Commentary by Obscure History, aka Joshua Z. Includes quotes from this website!

About

This is Guy Inchbald's web site on all things to do with JW Dunne. It began on my blocki and moved to this more permanent home in 2019.

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