Lord Dunsany

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Lord Dunsany in 1919.
There be islands in the Central Sea, whose waters are bounded by no shore and where no ships come--this is the faith of their people.
The Gods of Pegāna

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish fantasy author active in the first half of the twentieth century. He first became famous for The Gods of Pegana, a collection of supershort stories about a set of fictional gods who created the Worlds. He later wrote a great deal of fantasy, including The King of Elfland's Daughter and many many short stories. Later in life, he wrote a variety of non-fantastic fiction, including the tales of Jorkens, a clubman who tells fantastic tales but always loses the one bit of evidence that would prove the tales were true, and Smethers, a little man with a little business and a most peculiar roommate.

Dunsany also wrote many plays, which seem to be mostly forgotten, much like his other work. His works vary greatly in tone and style, which is particularly apparent in a recent collection from Penguin that spans most of his career.

Dunsany's influence on later fantasy is usually overshadowed by J. R. R. Tolkien (who himself cited Dunsany as one of his inspirations), but he was very famous in his day. The dreamlike prose of his early work is particularly addictive and frequently imitated by those who read him. For that reason, Ursula K. Le Guin dubbed him "the First Terrible Fate That Befalleth Unwary Beginners in Fantasy".

  • H.P. Lovecraft was a great admirer of Dunsany's early work and his Dream Cycle is clearly influenced by Pegāna and Dunsany's own Dream Land tales.
  • Neil Gaiman's Stardust shows certain similarities with The King of Elfland's Daughter and echoes Dunsany's phrase 'the lands we know'.
  • Tolkien's Ulmo is described in very similar terms to Dunsany's Slid, whose soul is by the sea and whose voice is in all waters and all who hear that call must wander until they at last reach the sea. In his storm-causing aspect, Slid resembles the Maia Osse; both are described as 'exulting' or 'rejoicing' when raising a storm.
  • The Sword of Welleran was greatly admired by Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, and may be considered one of the starting points of Sword and Sorcery fantasy. It shares this place with 'The Fortress Unvanquishable, save for Sacnoth.'
  • Dunsany's influence has extended to anime series such as Haibane Renmei, Simoun, and So Ra No Wo To.

Dunsany saw action in the Second Boer War and World War I as a member of the Coldstream Guards and the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He was also an excellent chess player and developed Dunsany's Chess, a variant that pits a standard set of pieces against 32 pawns.

Works written by Lord Dunsany include:
Lord Dunsany provides examples of the following tropes: