Customer Reviews

King of Elfland's Daughter

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

When Terry Goodkind's "Soul of the Fire" - part of one of those multi-volume "epic" fantasy series so popular these days - was not yet released, Amazon readers had already posted a few hundred reviews of the book, almost all of which rated it at 5 stars. None of them had read a word of what they were reviewing, but that didn't stop them.

At the time of writing this, there are just a handful of reviews of Dunsany's "The King of Elfland's Daughter", which was first published in 1924 and which is one of the true classic fantasies of all time. And I doubt a great number will follow.

That's fashion for you.

Still, in about twenty or thirty years from now, I very much doubt if a lot of fantasy afficianados will be able to remember Terry Goodkind at all (let alone "Soul of the Fire"). But I do know that they'll remember Dunsany. As they will William Morris, E.R. Eddison, C.S. Lewis, and - of course - J.R.R. Tolkien.

You see, these are the original masters of fantasy. A lot of good - at times great - fantasy has been written since then (writers like Patricia McKillip, Stephen Donaldson, Ursula LeGuin, Guy Gavriel Kay come to mind), but these are the Old Ones. The ones, if you like, Who Knew What They Were Talking About.

To explain (in the case of Dunsany): a few years back, when in Ireland, I tried to visit the Dunsany ancestral home (yes, this is real aristocracy). I remember asking a local farmer for directions; then, after a little searching, I found a secluded gateway. I drove up the lane, crowded with trees, turned right - and there it was. One of the most beautiful and hospitable - and very real - castles you could imagine. And it suddenly dawned on me: if you lived in such a place - if your family had, for generations, lived in such a place, in such a troubled country, with so much pain and turmoil - you probably couldn't help but turn to some sort of fantasy. And that fantasy couldn't help but be more true than what all of us could come up with, munching our microwaved Internet dinners before flickering monitors and filing billion dollar law suits against any company that produces potentially harmful products.

Not knowing where it came from, it's easy for us to try to decide what good fantasy is - it seems we don't even need to read to book to review it - but we might do well do realise, every now and then, that some of it was written with a far greater perspective than we could aspire to.

In the end, "The King of Elfland's Daughter" is one of the masterpieces of early fantasy. It takes a little getting used to - like Henry James, for example - but if you like fantasy fiction at all, you must read this book. It is one of the very few fantasy books that if worth just about any price you pay for it.

One final remark: an absolutely excellent collection of Dunsany's shorter fiction was recently published by Victor Gollancz under the title "Time And The Gods" (Fantasy Masterworks Series). As far as I know, this has not been published in the US, but you should be able to get it from Amazon.co.uk. Buy it immediately; these stories will probably be out of print again very soon.

Another review, after three-dozen? Is anything of interest left to be said about this 1924 fantasy novel by Lord Dunsany?

Well, yes., I think that there is. The confusion expressed by some reviewers is easy to understand. After more than three quarters of a century, "The King of Elfland's Daughter" remains remarkably hard to place. Not absolutely unique on the level of details, it stands apart when seen as a whole. Although the author's copious and skillful writing in an improbable variety of genres set him apart from the rest of the Anglo-Irish Peerage, he seems to have shared their assumption that a man of his position and rank could do as he pleased, when he pleased. Including what he wanted to write.

As a result, this book won't fit into any neat category, whether it existed then, or emerged later.

The book seems to open with an idealized medieval scene, like one of the late-Victorian medieval romances by William Morris ("The Wood Beyond the World" or "The Well at the World's End"). We meet the old, wise, and patient lord of Erl, and the skilled and industrious people of Erl, ruled by a line that goes back seven hundred years. That takes a couple of paragraphs, and is interwoven with plot developments; despite a reputation for elaborate prose ("iridescent, crystalline, singing," according to H.P. Lovecraft), Dunsany could really be quite concise.

But, in a moment worthy of Dunsany's American contemporary, James Branch Cabell, at his most mordant, we meet these stolid people as the Parliament of Erl, taking the initiative for the first time in five centuries, asks that the land be ruled by "a magic lord." And so the current lord, feeling unable to refuse so "reasonable" a request, made after so long an interval, commissions his apparently matter-of-fact son, Alveric, to meet the demand by marrying a princess of Elfland. How to arrange it is Alveric's problem.

And if, indeed, Cabell had been writing the tale, everything after these first two (!) pages would have been about the absurdities of democracy, aristocracy, celebrity, marriage, and anything else that came into sight; a version of "Jurgen" (1919) or "Figures of Earth" (1921). For sources, one would look back with certainty to the quest of an Elf-queen in Chaucer-the-pilgrim's comically inept "Tale of Sir Thopas" in "The Canterbury Tales."

But instead of Cabell's satire, or Chaucer's, we then get charming word-pictures of the obviously British countryside (England and Ireland both seem to be drawn upon), vignettes of children, and of trolls, and the sensations of dogs -- this being in fact unmistakably the work of the Anglo-Irish Lord Dunsany, travel-writer, essayist, and master of the very short story.

As Alveric tries to cross the forever-shifting borders of Elfland, seeking the Elfin Mountains across the edges of the fields we know, the author might have been anticipating Hope Mirrlees' "Lud-in-the-Mist," still two years from publication. But the nature of the traffic between Erl and Elfland is rather different than that between Mirrlees' Free State of Dorimare and the Elfin Marches, and looking forward seems no more helpful than looking back.

And, eventually, we come to an extraordinarily detailed account of hunting a unicorn with dogs, using strictly medieval methods -- for stags, not unicorns. Dunsany was an enthusiastic hunter himself, and, to judge from John Cummins' "The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting" (1988), he knew how deer were pursued and taken "par force" by his Anglo-Norman ancestors. It is rather grimly realistic. If you can't tolerate the sort of predator-kills-its-prey scene from which the cameras always pan back on wildlife shows, you may have a problem here. It is an extraordinary accomplishment, although it was years before I realized quite how good, as well as how exciting, it was. (Explanations of the hunting scenes in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" were the first to prove helpful; Turgenyev and Tolstoy provided parallels, but were too nineteenth-century, as well as Russian, to be secure guides.)

Note to (some) Robert. E. Howard fans: You don't need a well-muscled warrior laying waste to whole armies to have action scenes!

So it should be no surprise that it doesn't seem to fit any established categories. "The King of Elfland's Daughter" is "of its own kind," *sui generis,* to be enjoyed -- or not enjoyed -- on its own merits. If not as unique as the Phoenix, it still stands alone, hard to judge from any amount of experience. It is perhaps more easily absorbed by the practiced reader, who recognizes the unexpected as unusual, or even by the totally inexperienced, than by the relative novice looking for genre-based cues in a book that preceded their invention, by a writer who, if he had known the conventions, probably would have ignored them whenever he wanted to.

The 1920s seem to have been a good time for publishing fantasy, but it didn't last. Faced with the then established publishers' and retailers' belief -- or, given some actual sales figures, the superstition -- that "fantasy doesn't sell," it is not surprising that, like much of Dunsany's production, this book faded from store shelves and the publisher's list, and then from memory, known only to those fortunate enough to lay hands on a copy. Dunsany himself was hardly forgotten, of course -- he continued to publish, almost until his death in 1957. He left an impact on many writers in the first half of the century, some very different from others. H.P. Lovecraft, of course, but also Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp (and not just when they turned Mr. Jorkens' club into Gavagan's Bar); and Fritz Leiber, who would have been particularly interested in Dunsany the playwright. And he would do so again; but it would take awhile.

Then Bob Pepper presented the unicorn hunt as dark stained-glass for the front side of the wraparound cover of the June 1969 Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, catching much of the action without the blood. (The series logo, by the way, was "The Unicorn's Head"!) That mass-market paperback of "The King of Elfland's Daughter," with a typically enthusiastic, but not terribly informative, introduction by Lin Carter, presented the book to a whole new set of readers (myself among them). Many of us wondered where it had been all our lives. Out of print for forty years! Another demonstration that the physically inaccessible will be obscure, without regard to any real merits.

It was reprinted in that format in 1973, and had a third printing, without the introduction, and with a new cover by Darrell Sweet, as a Ballantine Fantasy in January 1977. (It was part of the transition, completed in March, to the Del Rey imprint, Ballantine Books having been acquired by Random House; so no "Adult" in the label, and the new "Basilisk's Crest" insignia appeared in place of any of the versions of the "Unicorn's Head.") This seems to have been the last American-based edition for about twenty years, although there was at least one British-based trade-paperback edition, in 1982. (I say "based" because there seems to have been international distribution of both.)

The Ballantine mass-market edition, with the substitution / addition of a new introduction, was eventually the basis of the "Del Rey Impact" trade paperback of 1999 (and its "library binding" counterpart), and this of the "Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks" edition (UK) in 2001, both with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, and cover art from John William Waterhouse's vaguely relevant "La Belle Dane Sans Merci" of 1893 (illustrating the Keats poem, in the Pre-Raphaelite mode). The Gollancz edition differs visibly in the absence of the bands at the top and bottom of the cover.

These forms of the text, at 242 pages besides varying front matter, seem distinct from the 282-page Unwin Paperbacks trade edition, with a cover by Kathy Wyatt, published in 1982. Although I have not noticed any textual differences, it may, being re-set, go back independently to the original G.P. Putnam printing (301 pages); or to a reported 1972 British edition (Tom Stacey, London), which I have not seen.

Not a lot of editions and printings, but the book has been kept alive, despite some gaps in availability. And, given the corrupt (or, frankly, butchered) condition of some fantasy and science fiction classics, we may have in this case a happy state of relative reliability of all the available forms.

Lord Dunsany is acknowledged by many, including leading authors (from W.B. Yeats and Lovecraft to top writers of today) as one of the greatest contributors to the field of modern fantasy. Sadly, many of his works have been allowed by publishers to slip out of print and many readers today have never had the chance... This book is one of his best and anyone who enjoys fantastic fiction, myth or legend should try it. The story has such power, is written so lyrically, is woven so richly, that there can be few comparisons. You care about the people, you can see the realms before you. There is depth and complexity, joy and heartbreak, detail and sweeping vision, and a leavening of humour (some supplied by the people of the land but especially by the troll... and no, this is not some stereotypical "bad guy on a bridge"). For style and reach, few can touch Dunsany. Don't miss out - and when you've read this book, try "The Charwoman's Shadow", also reprinted. For something different, there's a whole alternate mythology in "The Complete Pegana" and some truly outstanding short stories in "The Hashish Man" - and keep an eye out for any other Dunsany works. Maybe even write or e-mail a publisher or two to look for more...

Arguably, the beginning of the end for fantastic writing came was the complex and detailed history of Middle Earth in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings; suddenly, books became encyclopediae with stories and any sort of imagination became redundant. This is an accusation that could never be levelled at The King of Elfland's Daughter. This beautiful, evocative book, written before the introduction of the sword-and-accountancy template, improvises its reality to produce something with more resemblance to Lewis Carrol than Tolkein. The feel is almost psychedelic, but the gently ornate prose glows with the sort of tender magic that would be entirely lost by wilder fantasies to follow. The story itself deals with the desire of the men of Erl to have a magic lord rule them, and progresses through thunderbolts picked up in cabbage patches and unicorn hunts, in and out of the fields we know, to the final enchantment, and a mesmerisingly gentle conclusion. Some readers find the underdeveloped characters and the slow moving story frustrating, but this is probably a symptom of the modern approach to fantasy; rather than define a background and then tell a heavily developed story within it, Dunsany moves the setting to the foreground, using the story almost as a device to reveal his beautifully imagined vision. In my view, this book is truly the essence of imaginative writing: it's genuinely creative rather than following a template and, rather than numb the reader with facts and details, uses broad brush strokes, allowing the mind to expand into the gaps. It is a true classic of the genre, and I would recommend it to anyone jaded by the mundane visions of modern fantasy.

After reading mostly positive reviews on this webpage concerning Lord Dunsany's novel I went in search of it, and found it at my university library. Reading it was quite a different experience for me, but people who aren't prepared for the style of writing like I was might be disappointed, confused or scorning of the slow, dream-like pace, archetype characters and poetical language. This might be especially true of fans of typical 'fantasy' genre books (authors such as David Eddings or Terry Brooks) where a fantasy universe is deemed to be good only if it has a solid backing and an exhaustive array of facts and figures to add realism to the stories. Lord Dusany however, expects the reader to take for granted the existence of Elfland, trolls, elves and will o' the wisps, without trying to explain them. 'The King of Elfland's Daughter' is refreshingly free of geographies, biologies, cultures, or other infinite details that are so prevailent in other fantasy cult books.

The story goes that the Parliament of Erl approaches their king, eager for their small country to be known throughout the lands. The solution is for it to somehow imbue magic into its royalty, and to achieve this the king sends his son Alveric into Elfland to make the King of Elfland's daughter his wife. Alveric is successful in this, and brings the beautiful Lirazel back to Erl, where they have a child Orien. The King of Elfland however desparatly wants his daughter returned to him, and by use of three powerful runes, contrives to bring her back to her home.

Dunsany delves into several themes throughout the book, all framed by the contrasts of Erl and Elfland. Within this, he explores the differences between Paganism and Christianity, freedom and restrictions, the passage of times, mortality and immortality, male and female, parent and child - the list goes on. Running through these is the main story thread that makes clear that everyone desires what they cannot have, and although by the end of the novel their desires come to furfillment, it is in an ironic resolution that no one (including this reviewer) could have ever wished for. The ending is thus happy, but contains a certain sense of something bittersweet, like a lost childhood that Dusany continually likens Elfland to.

It was acknowledged by many later fantasy writers that they were inspired by Dunsany, including (obviously) Tolkien. It is no coincidence that Alveric and Lirazel have a certain resemblance to Aragorn and Arwen in way of their courtly love and somewhat 'forbidden' romance. However, I feel that Dunsany hits upon notes of inevitable dischord between the two that Tolkien neglects. I wonder for example if Arwen ever felt: 'the years that assail beauty, and the harshness that vex the spirit that were already about her, and the doom of all mortals hung over her head.' It is something for devoted Tolkien fans to think about, as well as potent storytelling. (That wasn't a dig at Tolkien by any means, just a thought to dwell on).

On the actual styles of storytelling, many people might feel frustrated at the continued use of 'the fields we know' to describe earth, and faery as a place 'only told of in song'. However, as I went through the story, I found the repetition to become quite familiar and comfiting, like a steady rhythm or heartbeat, and the final sentence making use of this repeated phrase made me take a deep sigh of contentment. Lord Dunsany's other gift is his use of metaphor and imagery. For instance, his use of the priest likening Lirazel to a mermaid, and then later echoing this thought with 'there was something in [the priest's] voice as he spoke, a little distant from her, and [Lirazel] knew that he spoke as one that walked safe upon the shore, calling far to a mermaid in a dangerous sea,' makes this not a book, but literature. Dunsany's soft, poetical, vivid, mellow language is what makes this book so appealing, and used to unforgetable descriptions of Elfland, twilight, the countryside, and beauty in all its forms.

A couple of times he faulters when he slips into what I've described above - trying to make story *real*. References to Tennyson and the infamous unicorn horn of Rome are jarring, and pull one out of the dreamy atmosphere. The archetypes are expected and unsurprising - the mighty king of Elfland, the elusive witch-upon-the-hill, the elfin beauty, the warrior-king, the hunter-prince, the trickster fey - we've encounted them countless times in one form or another.

But overall, this book has my recommendation, for a novelty to see how the fantasy-writers wrote before Tolkien, and for a wonderful escape into a glorious world. Plus, you can learn some little bits of trivia that you may of not known before, for instance - did you know that faeries hate dogs? That they cause clocks to stop? That their infants can talk?

Reading this short, powerful novel is like falling into a dream from which it is hard to awaken. Dunsany's prose is deliciously rich, and he moves through this tale of love and loss and strange longing with infinite grace, never laboring over a point or rushing the majestic pace. Those who are too entrenched in modern prose styles certainly might find the work lacking in the kind of day-to-day detail of the characters' lives, but readers should approach this work with more of a sense of the classic fairy tale or perhaps the biblical parable. I intend to pass this book along to everyone I know who enjoys a good story, and I hope to read it again many times myself!

I have just finished reading this book for the first time, and I can't wait until I read it again. As a fantasy writer of rather mythopoetic stories, I consider this to be one of the greatest inspirations for me. It is a fantasy in the truest sense--a haunting, adventurous, bittersweet and tremendously beautiful story that follows me now like the most wonderful dream. Lord Dunsany is indeed "the great-grandfather of us all," a master to learn from, a storyteller to touch even the most callous heart.

I treasure this book!

King of Elfland's Daughter is an unusual, poetic fantasy about the often uneasy relationship between ordinary reality and magic. A classic written in the 1920s, it has recently been republished, perhaps because of the popularity of fantasy and especially all things having to do with faeries and elves. Lord Dunsany's novel is not a conventional one, though it does have a fairly standard plot for this kind of tale. What makes it unconventional is that the story and individual characters remain in the background while the language, atmosphere and descriptions are primary. There is also very little dialogue. This means the modern reader may need more than average patience and concentration to enjoy this work. To anyone with an interest in this genre, however, it is worth adjusting to Dunsany's style.

The story takes place during an unspecified time in a land called Erl. The people of this land, dissatisfied with their everyday lives, make a strange demand of their old ruler -that he bring magic into the kingdom. So he sends his son Alveric to marry Lirazel, the daughter of the elf king. The beginning of this story is fairly common for a fantasy or fairy tale. Before setting off on his quest, Alveric consults the mysterious witch Ziroonderel, who provides him with a magical sword that will enable him to triumph over any hostile forces he may encounter in Elfland. Needless to say, Alveric manages to find Elfland, which is geographically not very far from "the fields we know" (Dunsany's hypnotically repeated term for our world), yet a place that the local people refuse to speak about. They even refrain from looking to the East, the direction that Elfland lies in relation to Erl. Lirazel is brought back to Erl, and the couple has a son, Orion. Yet Lirazel never adjusts to life among mortals, and her father, the King of Elfland, manages to lure her back with a powerful spell. The remainder of the book describes Alveric's seemingly futile effort to return to Elfland and find Lirazel.

What is striking about this novel is the amount of attention given to certain details and subtle points. The beauty and magic of Elfland is nicely described, but what is really stressed is the strange, mutable boundary that separates Elfland from Erl. There are certain creatures, such as the fox and the unicorn which are able to easily traverse this boundary. The escapades of playful trolls are also followed. In places, Dunsany almost seems to lose track of the main characters as he follows these otherworldly creatures. As for the inhabitants of Erl, what stands out is their ambivalence towards all things magical. On the one hand, they demand that magic enter their world. Yet when it does arrive, they immediately become suspicious of it and want to expel it. One character, known as the Freer, a kind of minister, goes as far as to curse all the magical beings who, in his view, are damned. Most of the people, however, maintain a kind of fascinated uneasiness with elves, trolls and their otherworldly kin. This human tendency to both crave and fear the magical and mysterious is at the heart of the novel and what sets it apart from countless others. As a story, it is not one of the greatest. There is not very much suspense, and the romance between Alveric and Lirazel is something of a mismatch. To really appreciate this book you have to recognize that it is not really about Alveric, Lirazel or Orion, but about the forces that shape their worlds. Dunsany sets out to do more than tell another fascinating tale as he explores with unusual depth and perception the importance of magic and mystery in our lives.

Like many of my book purchases, I acquired this from the invaluable discounter Daedalus. It must be some thirty years since I've read anything in the fantasy genre, so I don't review this as a "fan" or someone with a lot of experience in it.

KOED both provoked my curiosity and frustrated me, taking me awhile to finish it. Dunsany's success is in convincingly creating his dreamy worlds, the literary ploy in his dichotomy between "the fields we know," Erl, and the shimmering, elusive region of Elfland. In his story they are first held in their own mutually respected regions, then violated by Prince Alveric's incursion, which results in the apparent waning (protective consolidation) of Elfland. As the book closes Elfland returns, a reverse incursion that gives it sway over the mortal Erl.

All of this gave me a feeling akin to watching a mural or mosaic in a Medieval church set in motion, or a tapestry with secular subject matter undergoing animation - albeit two-diminsional. While his prose is vivid and innovative on its own terms, it is here and there so dreamy and hallucinatory that I found myself thrown off the page, and needed to return to it by an extra force of mental will.

All of which is to say, I just may be better suited to "the BOOKS we know," the legacy and continuity of the Western novel since Don Quixote. In the best of novels in this tradition, we become invested in the characters, identify with them, experiencing their physical presence and psyches/intellects as the story unfolds and culminates. By contrast, Dunsany never lets us inside his characters. They remain animate AND flat types for our view, and are overall nearly indistinguishable from the fields and farmhouses of Erl, or the shimmering, perpetual hyper-summer glades of Elfland. For me, Dunsany did succeed in gaining my reader's allegiance to the authorial integrity of his created magical realm, but in the end, the place just gave me the creeps.

This phrase, used by Lord Dunsany to describe the scent of a unicorn to a hound's nose, describes his own novel just as aptly. Or, as Neil Gaiman writes in his introduction, the novel is "a rich red wine, which may come as a shock if all one has had so far has been cola." This novel must be savoured, not rapidly devoured, as I find myself doing with so many contemporary science fiction and fantasy novels these days. Dunsany truly had a gift with words, and his descriptions, while seemingly vague, are beautiful; he knew just how much to leave to the reader's imagination. For example, what exactly does the King of Elfland's throne room look like? It is "the throne-room of which only song may tell." That doesn't say much, but at the same time, it says enough. The tone of this novel reminded me quite a bit of William Goldman's retelling of "The Princess Bride" -- Dunsany's narrator reminds me of a father (or grandfather, for those familiar with the film version) telling his son a bedtime story, or of the village storyteller holding sway over a captive audience. I can already tell that this will be a story I will enjoy sharing with my children, as it holds appeal for children of all ages, much like Neil Gaiman's "Stardust." I am thankful to Del Rey for bringing this novel back into print, and I look forward to reading more from Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Lord Dunsany.