Selections from the Writing of Lord Dunsany

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett was born into a very unusual situation in 1878. He was the eldest scion of a family that had lived in the oldest castle in Ireland since its construction in 1180 CE, and became the 18th Baron Dunsany in 1899 at the age of 21, when his father passed away. He was a soldier, lord, military trainer, propaganda writer, activist, and invented Dunsany’s Chess, in which one player has four ranks of pawns and no other pieces. 

He published mostly first drafts, writing short stories, fantasy novels, plays, and poems, with over 90 publications in his lifetime. A horseman, hunter and pistol champion whose family and friends were deeply involved in what came to be known as The Troubles. A man court martialled for supporting the Irish War of Independence, who raised toasts to the King in years to come, and worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory.

The list of those luminaries who acknowledge a debt to Dunsany is absurdly long. Lovecraft saw him on a speaking tour and wrote “There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces – but alas – where are my Lovecraft pieces?”. Tolkien gave a friend The Book of Wonder in order to help prepare for working on the Silmarillion together. Neil Gaiman, Arthur C Clarke, Ursula Le Guin, Guillermo del Toro, CL Moore, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock and David Eddings were all influenced by Dunsany’s writings, making him much like the Velvet Underground (“Not that many people listened to them, but everyone that did started a band” – paraphrase from David Bowie)

The artist Sydney Syme illustrated his work until 1922, and his visions of these fantasy realms started a lasting genre and style all their own. Syme’s work was the direct inspiration for at least three Dunsany stories, and the artist is mentioned in two tales by HP Lovecraft (Pickman's Model and The Call of Cthulhu)