Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany
 |
Lord Dunsany of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. |
''For the peerage, see
Baron Dunsany.
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany (
24 July 1878 –
25 October 1957) was an
Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in
fantasy and
horror published under his title
Lord Dunsany.
Edward Plunkett was the son of
John William Plunkett, 17th Baron Dunsany (
1853–
1899) and his wife Ernle Elizabeth Ernle-Erle Drax, née Grosvenor. He was a kinsman of the
Roman Catholic Saint
Oliver Plunkett, the martyred
Archbishop of Armagh. The Countess of Fingall, wife of Dunsany's cousin the
Earl of Fingall, wrote a best-selling account of the life of the aristocracy in Ireland in the late
19th century and early
20th century, called
Seventy Years Young.
Plunkett's brother was the noted admiral,
Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.
Lord Dunsany was educated at
Eton and
Sandhurst. He served as an officer in the
Coldstream Guards during the
Second Boer War and in the
Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in
World War I. He was a keen huntsman and sportsman, and was at one time the
chess and
pistol champion of Ireland.
His fame arose, however, from his prolific writing of short stories, novels, plays and poetry, many written with a quill pen. In addition to his original manuscripts, collected in the family archive (scholarly access possible by application), he enjoyed transcribing his works into specially bound volumes, which remain in the family collection.
His most notable
fantasy short stories were published in collections from
1905 to
1919: Dunsany had to pay for publication of the first such collection,
The Gods of Pegāna but never again had to do so. The stories in his first two books were set within an invented world, with its own gods, history and geography. His significance within the genre of fantasy writing is considerable.
The following is the opening paragraph of
The Hoard of the Gibbelins (first published in
The Book of Wonder in
1912), which gives a good indication of both tone and tenor of Dunsany's work:
The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their
larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be full again.
Influences
Dunsany's known literary influences include:
* Greek stage plays
* Herodotus
* The King James Bible
* Grimms' fairy tales
* Andersen's fairy tales
* His studies of Greek and Latin
* Irish speech patterns
*
The Darling of the Gods, a stage play from 1904 which presents a fantasy version of Japan that powerfully effected Dunsany and may be the strongest template for his own imaginary kingdoms
* Swinburne, who wrote the line "Time and the Gods are at strife." Dunsany later realized this was his unconscious influence for the title
Time and the GodsAccording to
Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany (1989), by Darrell Schweitzer, Dunsany never rewrote anything; everything he ever published was a first draft.
Jorkens
Lord Dunsany would often conceive stories while afield hunting, and would return to the manor and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper. For a certain type of story, he created Joseph Jorkens, an obese middle-aged raconteur who frequented the invented Billiards Club in London, and who would tell fantastic stories if someone would buy him a large whiskey and soda. From his tales, it was obvious that Mr. Jorkens had traveled to all seven continents, was extremely resourceful, and was well-versed in world cultures, but always came up short on becoming rich and famous. The
Jorkens books were of a type popular in fantasy and science fiction writing: the gentlemen's club, where extremely improbable tales are related.
The Jorkens stories were released in a three-volume set by Nightshade Press, 2004-2005, with the second and third volumes containing a small number of additional stories not included in the six books, including the last Jorkens story, written only months before the author's death.
Francis Ledwidge wrote to Dunsany in
1912 asking for help with getting his poetry published. Dusany was so impressed that he prepared the publication himself, and
Songs of the Fields was received with critical success upon its release in
1915. Ledwidge was killed at the
Battle of Passchendaele two years later.
H. P. Lovecraft was greatly impressed by Dunsany after seeing him on a speaking tour of the United States, and Lovecraft's early stories clearly show his influence. Lovecraft once wrote, "There are my '
Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces — but alas — where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
[Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge, March 8, 1929, quoted in Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos]Fletcher Pratt's 1948 novel
The Well of the Unicorn was written as a sequel to Dunsany's play
King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior.
Jorge Luis Borges included Dunsany's short story
Idle Days on the Yann as the twenty-seventh title in "
The Library of Babel".
David Eddings has named Lord Dunsany as his personal favourite writer, and recommended aspiring authors to sample him.
Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay on style in fantasy "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," wryly referred to Lord Dunsany as the "First Terrible Fate that Awaiteth Unwary Beginners in Fantasy," alluding to the (at the time) very common practice of young writers attempting to write in Lord Dunsany's style.
The catalogue of everything that Dunsany wrote during a more than 50-year writing career is quite extensive, and is especially fraught with pitfalls, owing to two things: first, Dunsany's many original books of collected short stories were later followed by numerous reprint collections, some of which included only previously published stories and nothing new; and second, many later collections bore titles very similar to somewhat different original books.
The following is a partial list compiled from various sources.
Short-story collections
Original
*
The Gods of Pegāna (
1905)
*
Time and the Gods (
1906)
*
The Sword of Welleran (
1908)
*
A Dreamer's Tales (
1910)
*
The Book of Wonder (
1912)
*
Fifty-one Tales, aka
The Food of Death (
1915)
*
Tales of Wonder (
1916) (published in America as
The Last Book of Wonder)
*
Tales of Three Hemispheres (
1919)
*
The Man Who Ate the Phoenix (
1947)
*
The Little Tales of Smethers (
1952)
*
The Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer and Other Fantasms (
1980)
=Jorkens
=
*
The Travel Tales of Mr Joseph Jorkens (
1931)
*
Jorkens Remembers Africa (
1934)
*
Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey (
1940)
*
The Fourth Book of Jorkens (
1948)
*
Jorkens Borrows Another Whiskey (
1954)
*
The Last Book of Jorkens (
2002)
Reprint Collections
*
Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsany (
1912), edited by W.B. Yeats
*
A Dreamer's Tales & Other Stories (
1917)
*
Book of Wonder (
1918)
*
The Sword of Welleran and Other Tales of Enchantment (
1954), selected by Lord and Lady Dunsany
*
At the Edge of the World (
1970)
*
Beyond the Fields We Know (
1972)
*
Gods, Men and Ghosts (
1972)
*
Over the Hills and Far Away (
1974)
*
Bethmoora and Other Stories (
1993)
*
The Exiles Club and Other Stories (
1993)
*
The Lands of Wonder (
1994)
*
The Hashish Man and Other Stories (
1996)
*
The Complete Pegana (
1998)
*
Time and the Gods (
2000)
*
In the Land of Time (
2004)
Novels
Fantasy
*
Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley aka
The Chronicles of Rodrigues (
1922)
*
The King of Elfland's Daughter (
1924)
*
The Charwoman's Shadow (
1926), second part of the Shadow Valley Chronicles
*
The Blessing of Pan (
1927)
*
The Curse of the Wise Woman (
1933)
*
My Talks with Dean Spanley (
1936)
*
The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders (
1950)
Other
*
Up in the Hills (
1935)
*
Rory and Bran (
1936)
*
The Story of Mona Sheehy (
1939)
*
Guerilla (
1944)
*
The Last Revolution (
1951)
*
His Fellow Men (
1952)
*
The Pleasures of a Futuroscope (
2003)
Drama Collections
*
Five Plays (
1914)
*
Plays of Gods and Men (
1917)
*
If (full-length play) (
1921)
*
Plays of Near and Far (
1922)
*
Alexander and Three Small Plays (
1925)
*
Seven Modern Comedies (
1928)
*
The Old Folk of the Centuries (full-length play) (
1930)
*
Mr Faithful (full-length play) (
1935)
*
Plays for Earth and Air (
1937)
Poetry
*
Fifty Poems (
1929)
*
Mirage Water (
1938)
*
War Poems (
1941)
*
Wandering Songs (
1943)
*
A Journey (
1944)
*
The Year (
1946)
*
The Odes of Horace (
1947) (translation)
*
To Awaken Pegasus (
1949)
Essays and sketches
*
Nowadays (
1918)
*
Tales of War (
1918)
*
Unhappy Far-Off Things (
1919)
*
If I Were Dictator (
1934)
*
My Ireland (
1937)
*
The Donnellan Lectures 1943 (
1945)
*
A Glimpse from a Watchtower (
1947)
*
The Jest of Hahalaba (
1929)
Autobiography
*
Patches of Sunlight (
1938)
*
While The Sirens Slept (
1944)
*
The Sirens Wake (
1945)
Millennium Fantasy Masterworks*
Time and the Gods (contains
The Gods of Pegāna,
Time and the Gods,
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories,
A Dreamer's Tales,
The Book of Wonder and
The Last Book of Wonder)
*
The King of Elfland's DaughterPenguin Classics *
In the Land of Time: and Other Fantasy TalesWildsidepress *
Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley*
Plays of Gods and Men *
The Book of Wonder *
Fifty-One Tales*
A Dreamer's Tales*
Tales of War: Expanded Edition *
Time and the Gods *
The Gods of Pegāna *
Unhappy Far-Off Things Night Shade Books *
The Collected Jorkens (three-volume set)
*
Lord Dunsany: the author's page in the official family site
*e-texts of
works by Lord Dunsany*
Lord Dunsany: a page on his fantasy fiction
*
Free ebook of Edward Plunkett Dunsany at
Project Gutenberg*
Dunsany Bibliography, including cover images and summaries
