The Milk of Dreams

A collection of short stories written and illustrated by noted surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, featuring such beings as John, who has wings for ears, and Seänor Mustache Mustache, who has two faces.

Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was born in Lancashire, England, to an industrialist father and an Irish mother. She was raised on fantastical folk tales told to her by her Irish nanny at her family’s estate, Crookhey Hall. Carrington would be expelled from two convent schools before enrolling in art school in Florence. She fled Europe during the Second World War and settled in Mexico, where she married the photographer Imre Weisz and had two sons. Carrington spent the rest of her life in Mexico City, moving in a circle of like-minded artists that included Remedios Varo and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Among Carrington’s published works is a novel, The Hearing Trumpet (1976), and two collections of short stories. NYRB Classics publishes her memoir, Down Below, and her Complete Stories is published by Dorothy, a Publishing Project in the United States and by Silver Press in the United Kingdom.