Apart from some bookplates and postcard designs, Die Träumenden Knaben was Kokoschka's first published work of prints, and he dedicated it to Gustav Klimt, one of the founders of the Vienna Secession. The series of eight plates was produced as transfer lithographs based on hand-coloured ink drawings by Kokoschka, illustrating a poem written by the artist himself. When the Wiener Werkstätte commissioned him to produce an illustrated book, it was intended as a children's book. Kokoschka's illustrations with their bright colours and lyrical, yet stylised depiction of human figures, landscapes and the natural world are certainly appealing also to the eyes of children. They are not however literal illustrations of the text. The poem, which could be described as a pagan pastoral, is associative rather than narrative, and quite complex, disturbing and overtly erotic. Shortly after its release, the Viennese art critic Ludwig Hevesi remarked that it was 'a fairytale book, but not for the children of philistines' (see Wingler & Welz, p. 70). While the images are firmly rooted in the style of the Viennese art nouveau, the text is distinctly expressionistic and points towards the artist's later, more radical artistic approach: '...I devour you/ men/ women/ half-awake listening children/ the raging/ loving werewolf in you...' (plate 4; our translation).
The print-run of five hundred sets was completed in 1908, but the first publication was not a success and few books were sold. In 1917, the publisher Kurt Wolff acquired the remaining unbound sets and re-issued them with a slightly different binding in an edition of 275 numbered copies.
Since the prints themselves do not differ between the editions of 1908 and 1917, it is impossible to say with certainly when the present proof set was issued, although it seems likely that Kokoschka signed it before or at the time of the first edition.
Die Träumenden Knaben is one of the few important printed works of the Vienna Secession and arguably the most beautiful.