I have chosen a title that shall show that I make no claim for this book to be up-to-date. As the first title indicates, I hoped to show, to as many as might to read my words, something of the extent of the wrongs that the people of France had suffered.
These plays and stories have for their continual theme the passing away of gods and men and cities before the mysterious power which is sometimes called by some great god's name but more often Time. His travelers, who travel by so many rivers and deserts and listen to sounding names none heard before, come back with no tale that does not tell of vague rebellion against that power, and all the beautiful things they have seen get something of their charm from the pathos of fragility. This poet who has imagined colors, ceremonies and incredible processions that never passed before the eyes of Edgar Allen Poe or of De Quincey, and remembered as much fabulous beauty as Sir John Mandeville, has yet never wearied of the most universal of emotions. . . . He can show us the movement of sand, as we have seen it where the seashore meets the grass, but so changed that it becomes the deserts of the world. Only the sand knew and arose and was troubled and lay down again and the wind knew. -- from W.B. Yeats's Introduction
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here. -- Edward J.M.D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
Dunsany's Preface to this book is brief in the extreme: I hope for this book that it may come into the hands of those that were kind to my others and that it may not disappoint them. -- Lord Dunsany But the contents of this little volume are pretty special, and include Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean, Blagdaross, The Madness of Andelsprutz, Where the Tides Ebb and Flow, Bethmoora, Idle Days on the Yann, The Sword and the Idol, The Idle City, The Hashish Man, Poor Old Bill, The Beggars, Carcassonne, In Zaccarath, The Field, The Day of the Poll, and The Unhappy Body.
Most of what Lord Dunsany wrote was that sort of horrorish fantasy that he's well known for -- but this, well, it's at once entirely different and of a cloth of the rest of his work. These are sketches he wrote while serving on the front in the First World War -- recall the trenches, the horrors of that war, and we think you'll see our point. The First World War was a bloody, bloody conflict, and if it were fiction, it'd be horror. This book isn't fiction. It's Dunsany. It's horror.
From The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla: From steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchids blow, where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and fireflies glide about by night like little moving stars, the travelers went three days through forests of cactus till they came to the open plains where the oryx are. When Bwona Khubla had gone there three years ago, what with malaria with which he was shaking all over, and what with disgust at finding the water-hole dry, he had decided to die there, and in that part of the world such decisions are always fatal. In any case he was overdue to die, but hitherto his amazing resolution, and that terrible strength of character that so astounded his porters, had kept him alive and moved his safari on. There is not doubt that he was a fearful man. . . . * Dunsany had a weird, weird imagination, but unlike most folks who think weird thoughts, he had a powerful ability to write (as you can see from the above). This peculiar collection is a very real treat: we envy you the reading of it. Among the treasures in this volume are The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla, How the Office of Postman Fell Vacant in Offord-Under-the-Wold, The Prayer of Boob Aheera, East and West, A Pretty Quarrel, How the Gods Avenged Meoul Ki Ning, The Gift of the Gods, The Sack of Emeralds, The Old Brown Coat, An Archive of the Older Mysteries, and A City of Wonder, and a section he called Beyond the Fields We Know, which included Publisher's Note, Idle Days on the Yann, A Shop in Go-By Street, and The Avenger of Perdndaris.
When travelers from London entered Arcady they lamented one to another the death of Pan. They saw him lying stiff and still, horned Pan still as stone, the dew collected on on his fur; he had not the look of a live animal. And evening came and a small star appeared. . . . Fifty-One very short tales from Lord Dunsany, master of the weird.
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron of Dunsany (1878 - 1957) was an Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. In this book: A Dreamer's Palace, 1910 The Book of Wonder, 1912 Tales of Wonder, 1916 Fifty-one Tales, 1915 Tales of War, 1918 Tales of Three Hemispheres, 1919 The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories, 1916 Don Rodriguez Chronicles of Shadow Valley, 1922 Unhappy Far-Off Things, 1919 Time and the Gods, 1922 Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay The Gods of Pegana, 1905
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here. -- Edward J.M.D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
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