Delmore Schwartz first wrote the short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" in July 1935, when he was twenty-one years old. The story was first published in the Partisan Review in 1937, in the first issue following the publication's reemergence. The next year, the story was published as the titular work of Schwartz's first book, a collection of short stories.
"In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" draws heavily from Schwartz's own familial upbringing. Schwartz was raised in a wealthy Brooklyn neighborhood thanks to his father's success in the real estate business. His parents, both Romanian Jews, had a terrible marriage that ended in divorce when Schwartz was just nine years old. The cause of the marital issues has been attributed to numerous factors, including his mother being hysterical and paranoid and his father philandering and making irresponsible financial decisions. Whatever the case may be, his parents' dysfunctional relationship and ensuing divorce were deeply traumatic for Schwartz and likely at least partly to blame in his later divorces and substance abuse.
Schwartz's father died in 1930, when Schwartz was 17 years old. Schwartz only received a small sum of money due to the corruption of the executor of the will; however, he held out hope of receiving the rest for at least 16 more years.
At the time he wrote "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," Schwartz had already studied at Columbia and the University of Wisconsin and had recently graduated with a B.A. from New York University. He completed a bit of graduate work at Harvard, but ended up returning to New York without a graduate degree. It was then that he got involved with the Partisan Review and, following the publication of his story, he became a prominent figure in New York intellectual circles. His work was praised by such figures as T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound, and Vladimir Nabokov counted "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" among his favorite American short stories.
