Lord Dunsany

I do not know where I may be when this preface is read. As I write it in August 1916, I am at Ebrington Barracks, Londonderry, recovering from a slight wound. But it does not greatly matter where I am; my dreams are here before you amongst the following pages; and writing in a day when life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the dearer, the only things that survive. Just now the civilization of Europe seems almost to have ceased, and nothing seems to grow in her torn fields but death, yet this is only for a while and dreams will come back again and bloom as of old, all the more radiantly for this terrible ploughing, as the flowers will bloom again where the trenches are and the primroses shelter in shell-holes for many seasons, when weeping Liberty has come home to Flanders. To some of you in America this may seem an unnecessary and wasteful quarrel, as other people's quarrels often are; but it comes to this that though we are all killed there will be songs again, but if we were to submit and so survive there could be neither songs nor dreams, nor any joyous free things any more. And do not regret the lives that are wasted amongst us, or the work that the dead would have done, for war is no accident that man's care could have averted, but is as natural, though not as regular, as the tides; as well regret the things that the tide has washed away, which destroys and cleanses and crumbles, and spares the minutest shells. And now I will write nothing further about our war, but offer you these books of dreams from Europe as one throws things of value, if only to oneself, at the last moment out of a burning house.

Fantasy Short Stories Fifty-One Talesby Lord DunsanyFifty-One Tales is a collection of fantasy short stories by Irish writer Lord Dunsany, considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin and others. The first editions, in hardcover, were published simultaneously in London and New York by Elkin Mathews and Mitchell Kennerly, respectively, in April, 1915. The British and American editions differ in that they arrange the material slightly differently and that each includes a story the other omits; "The Poet Speaks with Earth" in the British version, and "The Mist" in the American version. The collection's significance in the history of fantasy literature was recognized by its republication (as The Food of Death: Fifty-One Tales) by the Newcastle Publishing Company as the third volume of the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library in September, 1974. The Newcastle edition used the American version of the text. The book collects fifty-one short stories by the author. CONTENTSThe AssignationCharonThe Death of PanThe Sphinx at GizaThe HenWind and FogThe Raft-BuildersThe WorkmanThe GuestDeath and OdysseusDeath and the OrangeThe Prayer of the FlowerTime and the TradesmanThe Little CityThe Unpasturable FieldsThe Worm and the AngelThe Songless CountryThe Latest ThingThe Demagogue and the Demi-mondeThe Giant PoppyRosesThe Man With the Golden Ear-ringsThe Dream of King Karna-VootraThe StormA Mistaken IdentityThe True History of the Hare and the TortoiseAlone the ImmortalsA Moral Little TaleThe Return of SongSpring In TownHow the Enemy Came to ThlunranaA Losing GameTaking Up PicadillyAfter the FireThe CityThe Food of DeathThe Lonely IdolThe Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)The RewardThe Trouble in Leafy Green StreetThe MistFurrow-MakerLobster SaladThe Return of the ExilesNature and TimeThe Song of the BlackbirdThe MessengersThe Three Tall SonsCompromiseWhat We Have Come ToThe Tomb of Pan

Cherished fantasy author Lord Dunsany and master draftsman Sidney Sime produced an early masterpiece of Weird literature with their 1905 release of The Gods of Pegana. The American Eldritch Society for the Preservation of Hearsay and Rumor is proud to present this full collection of myths from a lost culture, with its original illustrations presented in color for the first time. Upon its original release, The Gods of Pegana became a cultural curiosity, although it fell out of print relatively quickly. It was praised for its ingenuity, and became a favorite of the art nouveau mystery cults. It has yet to see a satisfactory modern reprinting... until now. Enjoy all of Sidney Sime's original illustrations in full color for the first time. Dunsany's complete manuscript is presented in a slender modern volume, newly typeset with elegance and simplicity. Join Mana-Yood-Sushai, Slid, Hish and the rest of the pantheon in the gardens of time, as their stories are revealed through parable and testament. Unravel the secrets in the "Sayings of Kib", who is the Sender of Life; shudder at the "Deeds of Mung", Lord of All Deaths. Other stories include "Revolt of the Home Gods", "Of the Thing That Is Neither God Nor Beast", "The Eye in the Waste," and more. The Gods of Pegana greatly influenced a number of later authors; in particular, a young HP Lovecraft, who began to conceive of his Cthulhu Mythos while under its spell.

An inspiration to many for his style and prose, Lord Dunsany was a pioneer for fantasy fiction, inspiring such famous writers as H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Neil Gaiman, to name a few. More than sixty years since its first publication, The Last Revolution is now once again available to readers. In a time before computers were a mainstay of our lives, Lord Dunsany tells the story, which takes place in England, about the revolution of self-reproducing machines. Known to have a profound distaste for the Industrial Revolution, The Last Revolution touches on a topic we know all too well today: What happens if the computers take over? ? Good morning Pender. I hear you have made a Frankenstein.” This is the line that narrator Pender hears from an inventor, and he is soon playing a robot in a game of chess. Pender’s mood changes when he realizes that the computer he’s facing has an intelligence far superior to his own. From the introduction of the robots, a tense atmosphere is noted as the robots fight for the attention of their owners. Will these machines be able to coexist with their household counterparts, or will they rise as one and take the first steps against humanity? Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Once when the gods were young and only Their swarthy servant Time was without age, the gods lay sleeping by a broad river upon earth. There in a valley that from all the earth the gods had set apart for Their repose the gods dreamed marble dreams. And with domes and pinnacles the dreams arose and stood up proudly between the river and the sky, all shimmering white to the morning. In the city's midst the gleaming marble of a thousand steps climbed to the citadel where arose four pinnacles beckoning to heaven, and midmost between the pinnacles there stood the dome, vast, as the gods had dreamed it.

It was a cold winter's evening late in the Stone Age; the sun had gone down blazing over the plains of Thold; there were no clouds, only the chill blue sky and the imminence of stars; and the surface of the sleeping Earth began to harden against the cold of the night. Presently from their lairs arose, and shook themselves and went stealthily forth, those of Earth's children to whom it is the law to prowl abroad as soon as the dusk has fallen. And they went pattering softly over the plain, and their eyes shone in the dark, and crossed and recrossed one another in their courses. Suddenly there became manifest in the midst of the plain that fearful portent of the presence of Man-a little flickering fire. And the children of Earth who prowl abroad by night looked sideways at it and snarled and edged away.

"Inventor of a new mythology and weaver of surprising folklore, Lord Dunsany stands dedicated to a strange world of fantastic beauty . . . unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous and languorous world of incandescently exotic vision. No amount of mere description can convey more than a fraction of Lord Dunsany's pervasive charm." - H. P. Lovecraft "There is a seam of memorable beauty running through the whole story." - Seamus Heaney, The Listener "This story shows Lord Dunsany at his best. His imagination, and his mellifluous prose, are to be found in it; but more than most of his books it keeps its feet upon earth . . . it has the singular, melancholy charm of something solid and yet hazy, like the woods in autumn." - Saturday Review " N]o reader will forget the final wild scene . . . There is a strangeness and beauty and sorrow here, and all within a small and unobtrusive frame." - Bookman After his father's interference in Irish politics ends with a band of killers arriving on Christmas night to assassinate him, young Charles Peridore finds himself master of the estate. During idyllic school holidays, Charles enjoys riding to hounds and hunting geese and snipe while his friend Tommy Marlin tells stories of Tir-nan-Og, the land of eternal youth that lies just beyond the bog. But when Progress arrives in the form of an English corporation determined to convert the landscape into factories and housing, it appears that an entire way of life is destined to vanish. Only one thing stands in the way: the sorcery of an old witch, whose curses the English workers do not even believe in. In the novel's unforgettable conclusion, the ancient powers of the wise woman will be pitted against the machinery of modern corporate greed, with surprising and thrilling results. Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) is one of the most influential fantasy authors of the 20th century, counting H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman among his many admirers. Regarded by many as his finest novel, The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933), a rich blend of fantasy, nostalgia and autobiography, returns to print for the first time in decades in this edition, which features a new introduction by Mark Valentine.