Lord dunsany

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (July 24, 1878 - October 25, 1957) was an Anglo-Irish writer and playwright, best known for his published fairy tales under the name of Lord Dunsany. His work, which revolves around high fantasy, horror and the strange, exerted great influence and admiration on different authors such as H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jorge Luis Borges and Arthur C. Clarke.

Biography

Born in London into a noble Irish family, he received a careful education at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. In 1899 he inherited the title of lord, when his father died. As a soldier, he participated in the Boer War and the First World War. Among other hobbies, he was an excellent hunter and chess player. He maintained friendship with other Irish authors, such as Yeats. In 1957, he died in Dublin as a result of an attack of appendicitis.

Work

In Dunsany's stories, popular traditions, Celtic epics, oriental exoticism and dreamlike elements merge into a timeless world with a unique flavor. His stories of sword and sorcery, collected in volumes such as Welleran's Sword (1908) or Tales of a Dreamer (1922), make him a decisive pioneer of the genre of fiction. heroic fantasy. H. P. Lovecraft went on record as having great admiration for Dunsany and his work, citing her as one of his early influences. The creator of the Cthulhu Mythos wrote of Dunsany: "Her rich language, her cosmic outlook, her remote dream world, and her exquisite sense of the fantastic all appeal to me more than anything else in modern literature".

Lord Dunsany also wrote novels such as The King's Daughter of Elfland, where he addresses the subject of the immortal woman who, for love of a man, abandons her condition and has to accept death, thus foreshadowing the analogous choices of Lúthien in The Silmarillion and Arwen in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. On the other hand, his comedies, which were very popular in the first half of the 20th century, anticipate the theater of the absurd.

The artist Sidney Sime, remembered for his fantastic and satirical work, was Dunsany's favorite illustrator for his stories.

Selected Work

Stories

• The gods of Pegāna (The Gods of Pegāna, 1905)
• The time and the gods (Time and the Gods, 1906)
• Welleran's sword (The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories, 1908)
• Tales of a dreamer (A Dreamer's Tales, 1910)
• The Book of Wonders (The Book of Wonder, 1912)
• Amazing stories (Tales of Wonder, 1916)
• Counts of the three hemispheres (Tales of Three Hemispheres. A collection of Stories, 1919)

Novels

• Don Rodrigo: Chronicles of the Shadow Valley (Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley, 1922)
• The daughter of the king of the land of the elves (The King of Elfland's Daughter, 1924)
• The twilight of magic (The Charwoman's Shadow, 1926)

Theater

• The glowing door (1909)
• The gods of the mountain (1912)
• The missing silk hat (1913)
• Of gods and men (1917)

Poetry

• Fifty poems (1929)
• Water of mirage (1938)
• Poems of war (1941)
• To wake Pegasus (1949)

Memoirs (autobiographical trilogy)

• Pieces of light (1938)
• While the sirens slept (1944)
• The siren's wake (1945)