Wikipedia:

Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany

For the peerage, see Baron of Dunsany.
The Rt. Hon. The Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
Pseudonym: Lord Dunsany
Born: July 24 1878(1878--)
London
Died: October 25 1957 (aged 79)
Dublin
Occupation: Novelist
Nationality: Irish, British
Genres: High fantasy, Horror
Debut works: The Gods of Pegana
Influences: Herodotus, King James Bible, Keats, Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Algernon Swinburne
Influenced: H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman, David Eddings
Website: http://www.dunsany.net/18th.htm

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957) was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. He was born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, and died in Dublin.

Biography

Edward Plunkett ("Dunsany") was the son of John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (1853–1899) and his wife Ernle Elizabeth Ernle-Erle Drax, née Burton.

From an historically wealthy and famous family, Dunsany was related to many other well-known Irish figures. He was a kinsman of the Catholic Saint Oliver Plunkett, the martyred Archbishop of Armagh. He was notably tall at 6' 4", taking after his mother, a cousin of Sir Richard Burton. 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. His brother, from whom he was estranged, was the noted British naval officer, Admiral The Honourable Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax.

Edward Plunkett grew up at the family property (Dunstall Priory) in Shoreham, Kent, and at Dunsany Castle in County Meath. His schooling was at Cheam, Eton and Sandhurst, which he entered in 1896. The title passed in 1899, and Dunsany returned to Dunsany Castle after war duty, in 1901.

In 1903, he met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880-1970), youngest daughter of the 7th Earl of Jersey, head of the Jersey banking family, living at Osterley Park, and they were married in 1904. Their only child, Randal, was born in 1906. Beatrice was supportive, and assisted Dunsany in his writing, typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his 1950s retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death.

Dunsany was a keen hunter and sportsman, and was at one time the chess and pistol champion of Ireland, as well as provider of the local cricket ground near Dunsany Crossroads. He set chess puzzles for journals including The Times (of London), and also invented Dunsany's chess, an asymmetric chess variant which is notable for not involving any fairy pieces, unlike many variants which require the player to learn unconventional piece movements.

Dunsany served as an officer in the Coldstream Guards during the Second Boer War, in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in World War I and in the local defence forces of both Ireland and the United Kingdom during World War II.

Dunsany's fame arose chiefly from his prolific writings, and he was involved with the Irish Literary Revival. Supporting the Revival, Dunsany gave money to the Abbey Theatre, and he moved in Irish literary circles. He was well-acquainted with Yeats (who rarely acted as editor, but gathered and published a Dunsany selection), Lady Gregory, Percy French, "AE", Oliver St John Gogarty, Padraic Colum and others. Dunsany's own work, and contribution to the Irish literary heritage, was recognised through an honorary degree from Trinity College, Dublin.

In 1940, Dunsany was appointed Byron Professor of English in Athens, Greece.

In 1957, Lord Dunsany took ill while eating with the Earl and Countess of Fingall, in what proved to be an attack of appendicitis, and died in hospital in Dublin. Lady Beatrice survived him, overseeing his literary legacy until 1970, and their son, Randal, succeeded him to the Barony.

Writings

Dunsany was a prolific writer, penning short stories, novels, plays, poetry, essays and autobiography, and publishing over sixty books, not including individual plays. He began his authorial career in the late 1890's, with a few published verses, such as "Rhymes from a Suburb" and "The Spirit of the Bog", but he made a lasting impression in 1905 when he burst onto the publishing scene with the well-received collection The Gods of Pegana.

Dunsany's most notable fantasy short stories were published in collections from 1905 to 1919. He paid for the publication of the first such collection, The Gods of Pegāna, earning a commission on sales. This he never again had to do, the vast majority of his extensive writings selling.[1]

The stories in his first two books, and perhaps the beginning of his third, were set within an invented world, Pegāna, with its own gods, history and geography. Starting with this book, Dunsany's name is linked to that of Sidney Sime, his chosen artist, who illustrated much of his work, notably until 1922.[2]

Dunsany's style varied significantly throughout his writing career. Prominent Dunsany scholar S. T. Joshi has described these shifts as Dunsany moving on after he felt he had exhausted the potential of a style or medium. From the naïve fantasy of his earliest writings, through his early short story work in 1904-1908, he turned to the self-conscious fantasy of The Book of Wonder in 1912, in which he almost seems to be parodying his lofty early style.

Each of his collections varies in mood; A Dreamer's Tales varies from the wistfulness of "Blagdaross" to the horrors of "Poor Old Bill" and "Where the Tides Ebb and Flow" to the social satire of "The Day of the Poll."

The opening paragraph of "The Hoard of the Gibbelins" from The Book of Wonder, (1912) gives a good indication of both the tone and tenor of Dunsany's style at the time:

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.

After The Book of Wonder, Dunsany began to write plays--many of which were even more successful, at the time, than his early story collections--while also continuing to write short stories. He continued to write plays for the theatre into the 1930s, including the famous If, and a number for radio production.

Although many of Dunsany's stage plays were successfully produced within his lifetime, he also wrote a substantial number of "chamber plays" which were only intended to be read privately (as if they were stories) rather than staged with actors[citation needed]. Some of Dunsany's chamber plays contain supernatural events -- such as a character spontaneously appearing out of thin air, or vanishing in full view of the audience -- without any explanation of how the effect is to be staged -- a matter of no importance, since Dunsany did not intend these works actually to be performed.

Following a successful lecture touring in the USA in 1919-1920, and with his reputation now principally related to his plays, Dunsany temporarily reduced his output of short stories, concentrating on plays, novels, and poetry for a time.

His poetry, now little seen, was for a time so popular that it is recited by the lead character of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.

Dunsany's first novel, Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley, was published in 1922. It is set in "a Romantic Spain that never was," and follows the adventures of a young nobleman, Don Rodriguez, and his servant in their search for a castle for Rodriguez. It has been argued that Dunsany's inexperience with the novel form shows in the episodic nature of Don Rodriguez. In 1924, Dunsany published his second novel, The King of Elfland's Daughter, a return to his early style of writing, which is considered by many to be Dunsany's finest novel and a classic in the realm of the fantasy writing.

In his next novel, The Charwoman's Shadow, Dunsany returned to the Spanish milieu and to the light style of Don Rodriguez, to which it is related.

Though his style and medium shifted frequently, Dunsany's thematic concerns remained essentially the same. Many of Dunsany's later novels had an explicitly Irish theme, from the semi-autobiographical The Curse of the Wise Woman to His Fellow Men.

One of Dunsany's best-known characters was Joseph Jorkens, an obese middle-aged raconteur who frequented the fictional 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 travelled to all seven continents, was extremely resourceful, and well-versed in world cultures, but always came up short on becoming rich and famous. The Jorkens books, which sold well, were among the first of a type which was to become popular in fantasy and science fiction writing: extremely improbable "club tales" told at a gentleman's club or bar.

Dunsany's writing habits were considered peculiar. Beatrice said that "He always sat on a crumpled old hat while composing his tales." (The hat was eventually stolen by a visitor to Dunsany Castle.) Dunsany never rewrote anything; everything he ever published was a first draft.[3] Much of his work was penned with a quill pen; Lady Beatrice was usually the first to see the writings, and would help type them. It has been said that Lord Dunsany would often conceive stories while hunting, and would return to the Castle and draw in his family and servants to re-enact his visions before he set them on paper.

Media productions

  • Most of Dunsany's plays were performed during his lifetime, some of them many times in many locations.
  • Dunsany wrote several plays for radio production, some being collected in Plays for Earth and Air. The BBC has records of some being produced but according to articles on the author, no recordings are extant.
  • Dunsany is also recorded as having read short stories and poetry on air, and for private recording by Hazel Littlefield-Smith and friends in California.
  • The film It Happened Tomorrow credited a Dunsany short story as one of its sources.
  • The author appeared on early television a number of times.
  • An LP recording of a number of Dunsany's short stories, read by Vincent Price was published in the 1970s.
  • Two members of Steeleye Span recorded a concept album based on Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter in 1977, released by Chrysalis Records on LP and later on CD.
  • Rumours have been reported about film or TV options around a number of Dunsany works, from early stories through Jorkens, including The King of Elfland's Daughter, but the only such option documented publicly was one by George Pal on Dunsany's The Last Revolution.

Awards and honours

Lord Dunsany was initially an Associate Member of the Irish Academy of Letters, and later a full member. At one of their banquets, he asked Sean O'Faolain, who was presiding, "Do we not toast the King?" O'Faolain replied that there was only one toast: to the Nation; but after it was given and he'd called for coffee, Dunsany stood quietly among the bustle, raised his glass discreetly, and whispered "God bless him."[4]

The Curse of the Wise Woman received a prize in Ireland.

Dunsany also received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College Dublin.

Influences

  • Dunsany studied Greek and Latin, particularly Greek drama and Herodotus, the "Father of History". Dunsany wrote in a letter: "When I learned Greek at Cheam and heard of other gods a great pity came on me for those beautiful marble people that had become forsaken and this mood has never quite left me."1
  • The King James Bible. In a letter to Frank Harris, Dunsany wrote: "When I went to Cheam School I was given a lot of the Bible to read. This turned my thoughts eastward. For years no style seemed to me natural but that of the Bible and I feared that I never would become a writer when I saw that other people did not use it."
  • The wide-ranging collection in the Library of Dunsany Castle, dating back centuries and comprising many classic works, from early encyclopedias through parliamentary records, Greek and Latin works and Victorian illustrated books
  • The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen
  • Irish speech patterns
  • The Darling of the Gods, a stage play written by David Belasco and John Luther Long, first performed 1902-1903. The play presents a fantastical, imaginary version of Japan that powerfully affected Dunsany and may be a key template for his own imaginary kingdoms.
  • Algernon Swinburne, who wrote the line "Time and the Gods are at strife" in his 1866 poem "Hymn to Proserpine". Dunsany later realized this was his unconscious influence for the title Time and the Gods.
  • Dunsany's 1922 novel Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley seems to draw openly from Cervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605, 1615).
  • Dunsany named his play The Seventh Symphony (collected in Plays for Earth and Air [1937]) after Beethoven's 7th Symphony, which was one of Dunsany's favourite works of music[5]. One of the last Jorkens stories returns to this theme, referring to Beethoven's Tenth Symphony.

Writers associated with Dunsany

  • Francis Ledwidge, who wrote to Dunsany in 1912 asking for help with getting his poetry published. After a delay due to a hunting trip in Africa, Dunsany invited the poet to his home, and they met and corresponded regularly thereafter, and Dunsany was so impressed that he helped with publication, and with introductions to literary society. The two became friendly and Dunsany, trying to discourage Ledwidge from joining the army when World War I broke, offered financial support. Ledwidge, however, did sign-up, and found himself for a time in the same unit as Dunsany, who helped with publication of his first collection, Songs of the Fields, which was received with critical success upon its release in 1915. Throughout the war years, Ledwidge kept in contact with Dunsany, sending him poems. Ledwidge was killed at the Battle of Passchendaele two years later, even as his second collection of poetry, also selected by Dunsany, circulated. Dunsany subsequently arranged for the publication of a third collection, and later a first Collected Edition.
  • Mary Lavin, who received support and encouragement from Dunsany over many years
  • William Butler Yeats, who, as for no other writer, selected and edited a collection of Dunsany's work, in 1912
  • Lady Wentworth, poet, writing in a classical style, received support from Dunsany

Writers influenced by Dunsany

  • H. P. Lovecraft was greatly impressed by Dunsany after seeing him on a speaking tour of the United States, and Lovecraft's 'Dream-Cycle' stories clearly show his influence. Lovecraft once wrote, "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces — but alas — where are my Lovecraft pieces?" [6]
  • 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, a collection of works Borges collected and provided forewords to (not to be confused with his short story of the same name, "The Library of Babel").
  • 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.[7]
  • Peter S. Beagle also cites Dunsany as an influence, and wrote an introduction for one of the recent reprint editions.
  • David Eddings has named Lord Dunsany as his personal favourite writer, and recommended aspiring authors to sample him.
  • Arthur C. Clarke enjoyed Dunsany's work and corresponded with him between 1944 and 1956. Those letters are collected in the book Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany: A Correspondence. Clarke also edited and allowed the use of an early essay as an introduction to one volume of The Collected Jorkens.
  • Welleran Poltarnees, an author of numerous non-fantasy "blessing books" employing turn-of-the-century artwork, is a pen name based on two of Lord Dunsany's most famous stories.

Bibliography

The catalogue of Dunsany's work during his 50-year active writing career is quite extensive, and is fraught with pitfalls for two reasons: first, many of Dunsany's original books of collected short stories were later followed by reprint collections, some of which were unauthorised and included only previously published stories; and second, some later collections bore titles very similar to different original books.

In 1993, S. T. Joshi and Darrell Schweitzer released a bibliographic volume which, while making no claims to be the final word, gives considerable information on Dunsany's work. They noted that a "ledger" of at least some of Dunsany's work was thought to have existed at Dunsany Castle.

The following is a partial list compiled from various sources.

Short-story collections

Original

Jorkens

Reprint Collections

  • Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsany (1912, edited by W.B. Yeats) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[9])
  • A Dreamer's Tales and Other Stories (1917; collects A Dreamer's Tales and The Sword of Welleran, unauthorised)
  • Book of Wonder (1918; collects The Book of Wonder and Time and the Gods, unauthorised)
  • The Sword of Welleran and Other Tales of Enchantment (1954), selected by Lord and Lady Dunsany as a sampling of works to date

And after 1957:

Novels

Fantasy

Chronicles

  • The Blessing of Pan (1927, see also Pan)
  • The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933)
  • My Talks with Dean Spanley (1936)
  • The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders (1950)

Science Fiction

  • The Last Revolution (1951)
  • The Pleasures of a Futuroscope (2003), on a topic first introduced in a Jorkens story, dating from the mid-1950's

Other

  • Up in the Hills (1935)
  • Rory and Bran (1936)
  • The Story of Mona Sheehy (1939)
  • Guerilla (1944)
  • His Fellow Men (1952)

Drama

  • Most of the early Dunsany plays were issued in individual editions by Samuel French, freely available but mostly for the acting and production market.

Collections

  • Five Plays (1914)
  • A Night at an Inn (full-length play) (1916)
  • Plays of Gods and Men (1917) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[11])
  • If (full-length play) (1921) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[12])
  • Plays of Near and Far (1922)
  • Alexander and Three Small Plays (1925)
  • Seven Modern Comedies (1928)
  • The Old Folk of the Centuries (full-length play) (1930)
  • Mr Faithful (full-length play) (1935)
  • Plays for Earth and Air (1937), plays written for and produced on radio
  • The Ginger Cat and Other Lost Plays (2005), plays known to have existed, and in at least once case, acted, but only unearthed in the 2000's

Poetry Collections

Essays and sketches

  • Tales of War (1918) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[13]), war-related short stories, also issued in a revised "Expanded Edition" (not prepared by Dunsany but with his Estate's permission) with more stories, by Wildside Press
  • Nowadays (1918), a single long essay
  • Unhappy Far-Off Things (1919) (Project Gutenberg Entry:[14]), a second volume of war-related stories
  • If I Were Dictator (1934), a long satirical essay, one of a series by well-known figures of the period
  • My Ireland (1937), a non-fiction look at Ireland and her landscape and heritage, with photos
  • The Donnellan Lectures 1943 (1945), lectures given at Trinity College Dublin by Dunsany
  • A Glimpse from a Watchtower (1947), a long essay musing on the future in a nuclear era

Omnibus

  • The Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer and Other Fantasms (1980), a posthumous gathering of uncollected stories, essays and a play

Autobiography

  • Patches of Sunlight (1938)
  • While The Sirens Slept (1944)
  • The Sirens Wake (1945)

Books in print

Millennium Fantasy Masterworks

  • Time and the Gods (contains The Gods of Pegāna, Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories, A Dreamer's Tales, The Book of Wonder and The Last Book of Wonder, without the Sime illustrations and with Pegāna out of order)
  • The King of Elfland's Daughter

Penguin Classics

  • In the Land of Time: and Other Fantasy Tales

Del Rey

  • The King of Elfland's Daughter
  • The Charwoman's Shadow

Hippocampus Press

  • The Pleasures of a Futuroscope

Wildsidepress

  • The Gods of Pegāna
  • Time and the Gods
  • The Book of Wonder
  • A Dreamer's Tales
  • Fifty-One Tales
  • Tales of War: Expanded Edition
  • Unhappy Far-Off Things
  • Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley
  • Plays of Gods and Men
  • The Ginger Cat and Other Lost Plays

Night Shade Books

  • The Collected Jorkens (three-volume set, with some previously uncollected and unpublished stories at the end of Volumes 2 and 3, including the last Jorkens story written, from 1957)

Cold Spring Press

  • Tales of God and Men (contains Dunsany's first eight original short story collections, and all the related illustrations by Sidney Sime)

Forgotten Classics

  • The Dreams of a Prophet (hardcover, with large print edition also available via the Lulu website; contains the collections The Gods of Pegana, Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, and Fifty-One Tales)

Notes

Dunsany's literary rights passed from the author to a Trust, which was first managed by Beatrice, Lady Dunsany, and is currently managed by Curtis Brown of London and partner companies worldwide (some past US deals, for example, have been listed by Locus Magazine as by SCG). All of Dunsany's work is in copyright in most of the world as of 2007, the main exception being the early work (published before 1 January 1923), which is in the public domain in the United States.

Dunsany's primary home, over 820 years old, can be visited at certain times of year, and tours usually include the Library, but not the tower room he often liked to work in. His other home, Dunstall Priory, was sold to a fan, Grey Gowrie, later head of the Arts Council of the UK, and thence passed on to other owners. Dunsany's original manuscripts are collected in the family archive, including some specially bound volumes of some of his works; scholarly access is possible by application.

  1. ^ L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p 53 ISBN 0-87054-076-9.
  2. ^ L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p 54-5 ISBN 0-87054-076-9.
  3. ^ Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany (1989) by Darrell Schweitzer.
  4. ^ O'Faolain, Vive Moi!, pp. 350 n, 353
  5. ^ Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (p. 152)
  6. ^ Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge, March 8, 1929, quoted in Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
  7. ^ Ursula K. LeGuin, "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie", p 78-9 The Language of the Night ISBN 0-425-05205-2

References

  • Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 104-105. 
  • Joshi, S. T. (1993). Lord Dunsany: a Bibliography / by S. T. Joshi and Darrell Schweitzer. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1-33. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works written by or about:

See also


Peerage of Ireland
Preceded by
John William Plunkett		 Baron of Dunsany
1899–1957		 Succeeded by
Randal Arthur Henry Plunkett


Persondata
NAME Plunkett, Edward John Moreton Drax, 18th Baron of Dunsany
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lord Dunsany
SHORT DESCRIPTION Novelist
DATE OF BIRTH July 24 1878(1878--)
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH October 25 1957
PLACE OF DEATH Dublin

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 
 

Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany" at WikiAnswers.

 

Copyrights:

Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany".  Read more

Search for answers directly from your browser with the FREE Answers.com Toolbar!  
Click here to download now. 

Get Answers your way! Check out all our free tools and products.

On this page:   E-mail   print Print  Link  

 

Keep Reading

Mentioned In:

 

Do you have the answers?