Book Description
Lord Dunsany (1878-1957), Irish novelist, dramatist, and poet, has suffered a strange eclipse in critical recognition. In his day he was regarded as one of the premier Irish writers--a colleague of Yeats and Lady Gregory who at one time had five plays running simultaneously on Broadway. But Dunsany has emerged as perhaps the leading figure in modern fantastic literature: his stories of the "edge of the world" have been a significant influence on Tolkien, Le Guin, and other fantasists. No bibliography of Dunsany's astonishingly prolific work has ever been attempted before, but in this volume the compilers have not merely given complete information on Dunsany's many volumes of stories, plays, poetry, and essays, but have unearthed hundreds of works by Dunsany not previously known to exist. Foreign translations of Dunsany's work have also been recorded, as well as the many articles and reviews about Dunsany written both during and after his lifetime. All significant terms, primary and secondary, have been annotated. The picture that emerges from this volume is of a highly original writer who escapes easy genre classification and whose distinctive vision permeates his entire work. Perhaps it is now time for serious critical work on this unjustly neglected writer to begin.
About the Author
Darrell Schweitzer is the author of the first critical study of Lord Dunsany, "Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany" (Owlswick Press, 1989) and editor of a volume of previously uncollected Dunsany stories, essays, and plays. He is active in the fantasy field, the author of 150 stories, two novels, critical studies, reviews, essays, poems, and author-interviews. He edits the classic fantasy magazine, "Weird Tales". S.T. Joshi is senior editor of the literary criticism division of Chelsea House Publishers. He is the author of "The Weird Tale" (University of Texas Press) and of the standard bibliography of H.P. Lovecraft (Kent State University Press) and editor of a corrected edition of Lovecraft's fiction (Arkham House). He edits the scholarly journals "Lovecraft Studies", and "Studies in Weird Fiction".
