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Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany

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Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany (24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957) was an Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy and horror published under his title Lord Dunsany.

Contents

Biography

Edward Plunkett was the son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron Dunsany (1853–1899) and his wife Ernle Elizabeth Ernle-Erle Drax, née Grosvenor. He was a kinsman of the Roman Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh. The Countess of Fingall, wife of Dunsany's cousin the Earl of Fingall, wrote a best-selling account of the life of the aristocracy in Ireland in the late 19th century and early 20th century, called Seventy Years Young.

Plunkett's brother was the noted admiral, Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

Lord Dunsany was educated at Eton and Sandhurst. He served as an officer in the Coldstream Guards during the Second Boer War and in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in World War I. He was a keen huntsman and sportsman, and was at one time the chess and pistol champion of Ireland.

His fame arose, however, from his prolific writing of short stories, novels, plays and poetry, many written with a quill pen. In addition to his original manuscripts, collected in the family archive (scholarly access possible by application), he enjoyed transcribing his works into specially bound volumes, which remain in the family collection.

Writings

His most notable fantasy short stories were published in collections from 1905 to 1919: Dunsany had to pay for publication of the first such collection, The Gods of Pegāna but never again had to do so. The stories in his first two books were set within an invented world, with its own gods, history and geography. His significance within the genre of fantasy writing is considerable.

The following is the opening paragraph of The Hoard of the Gibbelins (first published in The Book of Wonder in 1912), which gives a good indication of both tone and tenor of Dunsany's work:

The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be full again.

Jorkens

Lord Dunsany would often conceive stories while afield hunting, and would return to the manor and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper. For a certain type of story, he created Joseph Jorkens, an obese middle-aged raconteur who frequented the invented Billiards Club in London, and who would tell fantastic stories if someone would buy him a large whiskey and soda. From his tales, it was obvious that Mr. Jorkens had traveled to all seven continents, was extremely resourceful, and was well-versed in world cultures, but always came up short on becoming rich and famous. The Jorkens books were of a type popular in fantasy and science fiction writing: the gentlemen's club, where extremely improbable tales are related.

The Jorkens stories were released in a three-volume set by Nightshade Press, 2004-2005, with the second and third volumes containing a small number of additional stories not included in the six books, including the last Jorkens story, written only months before the author's death.

Writers influenced by Dunsany

Francis Ledwidge wrote to Dunsany in 1912 asking for help with getting his poetry published. Dusany was so impressed that he prepared the publication himself, and Songs of the Fields was recieved with critical success upon its release in 1915. Ledwidge was killed at the Battle of Passchendaele two years later.

H. P. Lovecraft was greatly impressed by Dunsany after seeing him on a speaking tour of the United States, and Lovecraft's early stories clearly show his influence. Lovecraft once wrote, "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces — but alas — where are my Lovecraft pieces?" Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge, March 8, 1929, quoted in Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos

Fletcher Pratt's 1948 novel The Well of the Unicorn was written as a sequel to Dunsany's play King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior.

Jorge Luis Borges included Dunsany's short story Idle Days on the Yann as the twenty-seventh title in "The Library of Babel".

David Eddings has named Lord Dunsany as his personal favourite writer, and recommended aspiring authors to sample him.

Ursula K. Le Guin, in her essay on style in fantasy "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," wryly referred to Lord Dunsany as the "First Terrible Fate that Awaiteth Unwary Beginners in Fantasy," alluding to the (at the time) very common practice of young writers attempting to write in Lord Dunsany's style.

Bibliography

The catalogue of everything that Dunsany wrote during a more than 50-year writing career is quite extensive, and is especially fraught with pitfalls, owing to two things: first, Dunsany's many original books of collected short stories were later followed by numerous reprint collections, some of which included only previously published stories and nothing new; and second, many later collections bore titles very similar to somewhat different original books.

The following is a partial list compiled from various sources.

Short-story collections

Original

Jorkens

Reprint Collections

Novels

Fantasy

Other

Drama Collections

Poetry

Essays and sketches

Autobiography

Books in print

Millennium Fantasy Masterworks

[Penguin Classics]

[Wildsidepress]

[Night Shade Books]

Note

External links

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