Lord Dunsany

[Extollager]

Well, for my part, when I claim an author is great I am mainly talking about my own feelings about their work and not from a scholarly perspective. I'll leave to others, if they choose, to make such a case.

And, sure, everyone expresses personal feelings of enthusiasm that way. It's just that others might take the statement as an opportunity to enter into a discussion of the merits of the author.

 

[Extollager]

I think we all reassess as we get older.

Yeah! It's not that we are trying to avenge ourselves on our adolescent selves for being carried away by youthful enthusiasm. In fact there's a great quotation from Joyce Carol Oates that I need to find, about the adolescent as the ideal reader. Or you could take remarks by C. S. Lewis and Alan Garner on that aspect of our reading experience.

But I'm of an age now to reflect on this: I have spent much of my life reading*; well, what was it like, how did my reading experience change? What have I come to understand about the literary imagination in general and my own imagination specifically? What do I now regard as worthy of love and admiration, what now do I still feel affection for, and what have I come to see as deficient or even as counterfeit? Lately I have written, for my own use mostly, thousands of words about my youthful reading of Tolkien, Burroughs, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Garner, &c. These are both autobiographical and critical documents, and, among other things, a lot of this writing has helped me pass some time in which I have been recovering from surgery (which went very well).

The essential book on reading -- I wish I could give every interested person at Chrons a copy -- is C. S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism, which sounds dry and academic. Oh, dear people, no -- it is a lover of reading reflecting on his experience, addressing himself to other readers, thinking about what makes for good reading experience, etc. It is loaded with insights that will confirm themselves in your thinking as soon as you read them but that perhaps you haven't thought of before.

To anyone who is a bit nervous about reading something by Lewis because of his well-known Christianity -- I would assure you that you have virtually nothing to fear here. There is part of one sentence, at the very end of the book, that reflects his faith, but I think you will not be too put off by it. He writes, "Here [in reading great literature], as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." I think that's about it.

*Background: Some years ago, two things seemed to nudge me to start writing autobiographical documents. One was reading a long collection of anecdotes by a man who'd worked for the city of Coos Bay, where I lived as a kid (I knew his daughter a little), and the other was seeing my dad's memory becoming a bit impaired, and realizing that things you once could remember easily might, with age, become irretrievable. And as I have been writing these documents, I have been struck by how much of what I remember of my youthful days is connected with reading, and prowling bookstores, etc. I have no memories of scoring the winning touchdown, I didn't mop up the floor with the other side in a debate tournament, I didn't work like a slave at some hard open-air job, I didn't fight in a war, etc. I remember friends, I remember first love, but much of what I remember was books. So I've been reflecting a lot on a reading life.

 

[Randy M.]

Yeah! It's not that we are trying to avenge ourselves on our adolescent selves for being carried away by youthful enthusiasm. In fact there's a great quotation from Joyce Carol Oates that I need to find, about the adolescent as the ideal reader. Or you could take remarks by C. S. Lewis and Alan Garner on that aspect of our reading experience.

But I'm of an age now to reflect on this: I have spent much of my life reading*;

Me, too. I have retreated some from my wrestling with the acknowledged great books, to poking at what I enjoy, but there's still occasional grappling there, too. Part of that latter comes from rereading what I once loved and now don't recall as clearly as I'd like.

well, what was it like, how did my reading experience change? What have I come to understand about the literary imagination in general and my own imagination specifically?

And maybe not just imagination but character? I'm amazed at times to note that some of what I consider my views on the world seems to reflect early viewing of TV shows. I'm not sure I like it, and there's better and worse attached to it, but there it is.

What do I now regard as worthy of love and admiration, what now do I still feel affection for, and what have I come to see as deficient or even as counterfeit? Lately I have written, for my own use mostly, thousands of words about my youthful reading of Tolkien, Burroughs, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Garner, &c. These are both autobiographical and critical documents, and, among other things, a lot of this writing has helped me pass some time in which I have been recovering from surgery (which went very well).

I'm glad to hear this.

The essential book on reading -- I wish I could give every interested person at Chrons a copy -- is C. S. Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism, which sounds dry and academic. Oh, dear people, no -- it is a lover of reading reflecting on his experience, addressing himself to other readers, thinking about what makes for good reading experience, etc. It is loaded with insights that will confirm themselves in your thinking as soon as you read them but that perhaps you haven't thought of before.

I'll keep this in mind. The library has a copy, so I should be able to get it easily enough. Now it's all about finding time ...


Randy M.

 

[ShenValleyLewis]

Can anyone recommend a fascimile edition of one of the short story collections (Pegana, Welleran etc.) with the Sidney Sime illustrations? I find that with authors like Dunsany (who rely on the creation of a particular mood), the bare-bones font & layout of modern paperback reprints tend to take away from the experience. I love the look of the old books with the decorative initial capitals, the stylized fonts etc. I am aware of three editions currently in print that contain the Sime illustrations: Sword of Welleran from Dover, Book of Wonder from The Professor's Bookshelf, and Time and the Gods from Wildside Press. Dover reprints sometimes are facsimile copies but not always; I can't tell from the Amazon listing whether this one has reset text or not. The Amazon page previews of the Professor's Bookshelf edition show that it seems to have reset text, but with the old initial capitals reproduced. I can't tell anything about the Wildside Press edition, and I'm not familiar with that publisher so I don't know what kind of quality to expect. Thanks to anyone who can offer information or suggestions.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

Does anyone else get the impression that Lord Dunsany is neglected, not by readers, who clearly love his work and want it, but by his heirs or estate or whoever manages the rights to his work?

I'm repeatedly amazed at how difficult it is to find decent editions of his work, with good paper, type, formatting, etc. And then there seems to be a total inertia in putting out material that isn't in public domain already. For instance, why hasn't The Man Who Ate the Phoenix been reprinted since 1949?

And when something pops up, it's in expensive, hardback, limited editions that quickly disappear. The Jorken stories are a case in point.

 

[Extollager]

Does anyone else get the impression that Lord Dunsany is neglected, not by readers, who clearly love his work and want it, but by his heirs or estate or whoever manages the rights to his work?

Is he a niche author, like, say, Eddison?

 

[Randy M.]

It's kind of funny that Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell both were well-known and (mostly) respected writers in their day, but probably are, now, niche writers.

 

[Extollager]

Pairing Dunsany and Cabell makes good sense, in my opinion. They wrote fantasy but they are ironists and not mythopoeic authors, or so the case seems to me, after many years and (in Cabell's case) very little reading by me. Their affinity, I suspect, is more with Jack Vance, L. Sprague de Camp, and Terry Pratchett than with Tolkien, Eddison, Le Guin, Lewis, early Garner (I can't read later Garner), &c.

Now this is a hunch, but I suspect that, compared to the ironists, the mythopoeic authors have more staying power, though Eddison's style makes him a niche author for a different reason, and also when I say "Eddison" I should say I have read only The Worm Ouroboros. Thus Cabell and Dunsany are perhaps little read now, de Camp less than he was, and perhaps the vogue for Pratchett will give way and he will become a niche author in 20 years or so. I have my doubts about being here to see whether that happens, but those who are there and see will see.

 

[hitmouse]

Cabel is not a particularly easy read, and I suspect for no other reason will struggle to regain mass popularity regardless of any other merits. I haven’t read enough Dunsany to know if he falls into the same camp. There has to be a chance of a return for any prospective publishers.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I have to say that I have often been disappointed by Dunsany's short fiction, but very much enjoyed and admired two of his novels, The King of Elfland's Daughter (which I read many, many years ago and at least once since, and based on which I kept on seeking out his work in spite of the short stories never appealing much) and The Charwoman's Shadow (which I read several years ago, and by that time was pleasantly surprised to like another of his stories so much). Based on that admittedly small sample I suspect he was best at novel length, but I've yet to put that to the test by reading another.

 

[Randy M.]

Yes, the ironist vs. mythopoeic-ist (*cough*) might be part of the equation, but I think prose style would be a larger factor. Contemporary readers would find both overblown -- look at how many young readers complain about Tolkien's wordiness -- and hard to follow.

I do infrequently like to dip into Lord Dunsany's short works, though. Since less than a handful ever planted themselves in my memory, the majority are always new no matter how many times I've read them. And I enjoy his particular brand of oblique enjoyable.

 

[Peppa]

Lord Dunsany's books are very strange and beautiful, like Art Nouveau, but in words and sentences instead of colours. Many here have already praised The King of Elfland's Daughter, and the praise is well deserved. But I prefer The Blessing of Pan, though I can't say why.
Some readers here have called Dunsany "anti-Tolkien", while others have speculated about whether or not Dunsany was an influence on Tolkien. But in my view, it was all about the fact that in the early part of the last century Britain had many outstanding writers who were creating new worlds, strange, wonderful and bizarre. There were no such books before them. They lived in the same country at the same time, but tended to leave it in their minds and settle into their own worlds, so they were somewhat similar, and so was their style of writing. You can easily find the same ideas in their books, and you don't even have to look very hard. Nature versus technological progress, the Middle Ages versus modernity (I mean their modernity, of course, which is now a hundred years old), beauty versus ugliness, and so on.
But no two people in the world - let alone in the same country at the same time - are exactly alike. So their worlds, though created by the same aspiration, are still different.