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In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales (Penguin Classics)

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Lord Dunsany may never get the vast following of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but he does have the distinction of being one of the first fantasy writers in history. "In The Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales" is a collection of various stories he wrote, drawing from all of Dunsany's writing.

Among the longish (none of Dunsany's stories is really long) is Dunsany's short novel "Gods of Pegana," a collection of Dunsany's invented myths for countries that never really existed, and the novella "Sword of Welleran," in which legends come to life, including the famed sword of a hero. Not to mention a vast variety of short stories ranging from murder mysteries ("Two Bottles of Relish") to Victorian character study ("Thirteen At Table"), from horror (the creepy "Ghosts") to whimsical fantasy ("The Wonderful Window," the centaur-themed "Bride of the Man-Horse").

One of the good things about "In The Land of Time" is that except for Dunsany's war stories and club tales, just about every kind of fiction he wrote is in here. Fantasy, horror, regular fiction and invented myths -- this guy wrote 'em all. And editor S.T. Joshi does a pretty good job pulling together some of the best things Dunsany wrote. The main problem is that the collection is kind of serious. Since Dunsany could be very funny in some stories, this is leaving a big gap in the collection.

Like the fantasy writers who came after him, Dunsany dipped into myths that weren't his own (like "Charon," a memorable short story about the ferryman of the dead). At the same time, he wove his own legends and myths about gods and heroes, in a vaguely Middle-Eastern setting. If you didn't know better, you could almost believe that these legends were really from some crumbled desert city. And his slightly formal, sparklingly lush language only adds to this feeling.

"In the Land of Time: And Other Fantasy Tales" is a solid collection that shows nearly all of Lord Dunsany's considerable writing range. Dunsany's brilliant fantasy is a must-read.

What a marvellous writer Lord Dunsany was!

He influenced everyone, everyone who ever wrote fantasy: HP Lovecraft, Jack Vance, John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, Clark Ashton Smith, Roger Zelazny, the list goes on and on. He has the astonding ability to conjure believeable worlds and nail them down with unsurpassed beauty in 500 word, three page stories! Like Faberge Eggs, each tiny short story conveys lost worlds of intense poetic beauty.

He loved the sounds of King James English and returned to it over and over to fashion his worlds. *The Gods of Pagana* (printed in it's entirety) is no less than a series of drole Myths about the creation of the universe, paralleling and reflecting Greco Roman myths and even Genesis. The Pagana section is really a clever story cycle and most effective if you start from the beginning and read in sequence.

Dunsany doesn't much care for our modern world, (but what's to care for?...). He comes up with names for his imaginary cities that just roll off the tongue.

Dunsany wrote a story about a thief who is being pursued, running away with his stolen loot from the house at the End of the World. He runs down a long curving staircase on steps carved into the rock. Down and down he runs pursued by the nameless terror behind him, until the steps get larger and larger and the curve gets greater until he falls off the lower edge of the world into space! Now that is vision. (I think that happened to me in a nightmare once.) A number of his stories deal with the House at the End of the World - an English country house, a stone fence and outer space beyond.

The orignal hardbound editions (not this paperback) had funny etchings to go along with the stories. These are stories you will love and treasure and if you like this book, it's well worth your time to seek out the complete *Book of Wonder* series.

He cranked out these clever little worlds in story after story, *The Book of Wonder* and it's successors, written before and during World War I. He became saddened by the War and it's results (and the next one). Dunsany continued to live until the early 1960's, or so, never to return to this form of exotic fantasy.

This book is a survey of decades of his writing. A great introduction to some of his most famous stories. The book tails off somewhat at the end with the Jorgens stories and other post WW1 stuff which is not up to the quality of the crystalline visions in his earlier works.

To think that he accomplished so much with so few words and authors today with their word processors and multi-volume series accomplish so little in comparision.

Read him. He is the source.
Cannot be more highly recommended.

And Lord Dunsany was a real titled English (or Irish) Lord, a Peer of the Realm.

This is the book you search for on a cool autumn evening or a late summer day. It is a book you want to read and savour. The tales are timeless, sometimes melancholic filled with fantasy, delight and the fleeting nature of life, existence and the world (or worlds) around us. Dunsany evokes the sublime, the sacred, the profane and the childlike. I'm not the greatest fan of Tolkien (I found The Lord of the Rings long-winded). But then again I prefer vignettes of life. These tales offer the vignette of the fantasy world. Gods, goddesses, warriors of old, travelers in faraway lands, story-tellers...children playing pirates... there is everything you need in this book to have - well literally - a 'second childhood'.

I loved the earlier mythological work 'The Gods of Pegana' as much as 'The Tales of Wonder'. The prose poems were equally wondrous and in a few I could see where the Argentinian author, Jorge Luis Borges was highly influenced.

If you are interested in early fantasy literature, when the genre was in its infancy, pick up this collection. It is not antique, it is not dated. The best part is the writing is readable, accessible and highly poetic. Dunsany has a way with words and his story telling ability is highly admirable. Read this and you'll want to read more of him.

Lord Dunsany wrote raw fantasy. His work is like wood before it has completed a house; it is like precious gold before it has been made into a ring. Within this book you will find the resources of fantasy--the bits and pieces of the imagination that have been the tools of so many writers lingering on after this ingenious author. I suggest that everyone who has an imagination of their own glimpse into these elaborate shards of the mirror of fantasy's history so that they might know one of its fathers.

"The Bureau d'Echange de Maux," "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth," and the stories born off of Go-by Street are my favorite from this collection. Read these for yourself--read all of the stories; you will not be disappointed.

Sharkchild
Author of The Dark Verse, Volume I: From the Passages of Revenants (Imitation Leather)

"Pegana and environs", may not be Lord Dunsany at his best. May be these stories are not for the non initiated reader, but for dunsanians, who have read and reread his stories, during years, and in that way have a thorough appreciation of his writings.
The author created a mithology similar to ancient mithologies, but it does not exactly match with any of these. The tales have a nitzchean flavour (like Zarathusta). Pegana's tales also reminded me of indian mithology, specially the story of a god that beats a drum, to avoid the destruction of the manifest universe, even of the gods themselves, as a part of the universe.
Shiva Nataraja, according to vedic religión also beats a drum in his cosmic dance, and gods are not inmortal in indian cosmology, but they last what a cosmic cycle, also called "manvantara" last.
In the next cosmic cycles, there will be new gods, a new Indra, a new Varuna, etc. As in ancient India, the gods of Pegana are impermanent. There will be a time when the only inmortal god, "Mana Yood Sushai", will remain; when he will stop resting, he will wake and destroy the world and the gods, and afterward he will create a new world, with new gods. .
I may not have appreciated fully most of pegana's stories, but "In the land of times", is definitely gorgeous and poetic. One of the best.
The "tales of wonder" are better than Pegana; the "kith of the elf-folk" is an exquisite fairy tale. A methapor about our modern dreary civilized life, and its contrast with magic and the land of dreams. In the same line, are the stories "the wonderful Windows", and "The coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap"; "The ghosts" is a very good gothic story. Also gothic in spirit, is "the Bureau d'echange de Maux"; "Blagdaross", starts with a conversation between derelict objects in a waste place, like a cork, a piece of cord, and a rocking -wood horse. It is a display of a powerful imagination, and talent. A tribute to children, with their fantastic universe.
The prose poem, "where the Tides Ebb and Flow", is another good piece of gothic fiction, with a sort macabre touch. I liked it.
The "raft-builders" is about all devouring time, and oblivion. It is a poem about transcience. A new resemblance with indian thought.
In the prose poem, "the prayer of the flowers", the flowers complain of the indifference of men to their beauty, and to beautiful natural scenary in general. They prayed to the god Pan, who in answer to their prayer, tells them to wait, and that civilization with its dreary cities and factories will not last forever. Nature will vanquish in the last.
Grim civilization against nature, fantasy and magic. It was one of his concerns, and he wrote extensively about it. "the policeman prophecy", deals with the same subject.
"The exiles' club", is definitely wierd. Intriguing story. It make you think about who the exiles were. "Thirteen at a table", is another good ghost story. You do not know how it will end. Is not predictable.
The ludicrous Jorkens' stories are amusing. I liked "Our distants cousins", a story about interplanetary travel, and fantastic creatures, like an elephant with the size of a rat.
In "helping the fairies", Dunsany, - the greatest fantasist- seems to mock superstition, and their countrymen beliefs.
The compilator S.T. Joshi put together tales of different periods of Lord Dunsany career. They are representative of his changes and evolution. A well chosen selection
It is a very good book. Lord Dunsany will never have the vast following of Tolkien, but he will always have a small group of readers, lovers of good literature, that will read his tales during their life..

There has never been anyone quite like Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Lord Dunsany. H.P. Lovecraft wrote clumsy imitations before discovering his own distinctive vein of glutinous, astronomical horror. Almost all heroic fantasy from the 30s till today is indebted to him, however remotely. But he is not to everyone's taste, so what is he like?

Lord Dunsany travelled much in "the East", saw ancient cities and vanishing customs and ways of life. All of his fantastic tales are born of his longing for Lost Glory, for days when the world was colossal, heroic, unquantified, golden, lawless, drastic and permeable to the marvellous. Arch humour and the intolerable mingle with adventure and wonder. He loved the King James Bible, and his own style is modelled on its Semitic cadences, at once terse and oratorical, brief archaic sentences frequently beginning with "And".

A wealthy man who could write to please himself, he was one of the first to set tales in a purely imagined world. He was not a linguist like Tolkien and his invented names have an uncouth look: Slid, Mlideen, Soorenard, Zeenar, Zumbiboo, Rhoog, Mowrah Nawut. First he wrote "The Gods of Pegāna" and "Time and the Gods", which tell of the gods that rule over his private world and their unsuitable, disconcerting dealings with humankind. These are prose poems or parables, all very short (those in "Pegāna" often less than a page.) Ambrosia for the Dunsanian, but not the best start for the unconverted.

Three other collections of wonder-tales are more substantial. "The Sword of Welleran", "The Fall of Babbulkund", "The Fortress Unvanquishable", "Idle Days on the Yann", "Carcassonne", are hard to beat as glimpses of wondrous, impossible worlds. Some of the tales are set in the "real" world; Dunsany also wrote more conventional stories, as well as plays, poetry and autobiography.

The Fantasy Masterworks paperback, containing all five fantasy collections, appears to be out of print, but this is a well-chosen selection. It prints "The Gods of Pegāna" complete, selects wisely from the longer wonder-tales, and adds some examples of Dunsany's work in other genres. Try reading one of the stories named in the paragraph above to see if you'll ever be a fan.

Brothers and sisters, words fail me in trying to communicate to you who and what Lord Dunsany was. The truth is so simple, and yet seems so fantastic that you might hesitate to believe it. Along with E. R. Eddison, he is the best fiction writer that there ever was, or likely ever shall be (the same could be said of Dunsany as a short story writer in general, and must be, because we are here to tell the truth for a change). Tolkien, for example, is nothing but a pale shadow cast by the sun that is Dunsany; Lovecraft was a rather silly-seeming imitation. Once you have drunk from this well nothing else even comes close; it will almost ruin you for other writers. The question is, if he is just the deepest, saddest, funniest, most clever, most beautiful, and again excepting only Eddison the flat-out best writer of any kind the latter-day Western world has produced -- and he is, brothers and sisters, he IS -- why doesn't everyone know about it? Why has he fallen into obscurity?

The reason is simple and obvious. Look around you. The world has gone mad. We have lost all connection to the real. And this great man, this Lord Dunsany, saw it, saw it before almost anyone, saw it happening all around him. And he went out and wrote stories about it, stories that are the least real things ever created on the surface -- but touch the very highest levels of reality in their deeper parts. It is just those parts that are invisible or despised in our mad world, and that is why he is hated, ignored, forgotten -- by all but a few, a few who can peer through those veils of madness. Dunsany's work is not escapism. It is literature, literature of the highest order; literature of an exponentially higher order than any of the garbage pushed down our throats by the academics and pseudointellecutal humanities majors whose task it is to maintain this madhouse of a world -- you know, the kinds of people who despise Lord of the Rings and talk themselves into believing that deviant, culture-destroying nut cases such as James Joyce are great writers.

Brothers and sisters, you have found the source of that which you have so long sought. This book, all his best books, are a door into another world, a saner and better world, a world within you waiting to be discovered. Buy this book. Buy all of Dunsany's short story collections, especially the early ones. They will haunt your dreams forever and if you let them, they might even change your life, all without your noticing quite how, why, or when.