Donald Grant Mitchell (April 12, 1822 – December 15, 1908) was an American essayist and novelist who usually wrote under the pen name Ik Marvel.

In the text, Ik Marvel theorizes on boyhood, country life style, marriage, travel, and dreaming.

[2] Dream Life, a Fable of the Seasons, was dedicated to Washington Irving, to whom Mitchell was introduced by Lewis Gaylord Clark.

I have enjoyed your writings with such peculiar relish and have been so drawn toward the author by the qualities of head and heart evinced in them, that I confess I feel gratified by the dedication".

[3] Mitchell produced books of travel and volumes of essays on rural themes including Reveries of a Bachelor (1850), My Farm of Edgewood: A Country Book (1863), sketchy studies of English monarchs and of English and American literature, and a character novel entitled Doctor Johns (1866).