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Fifty-One Tales
Fifty-one
short stories by legendary fantasy master, Lord Dunsany. Most are very
short -- vignettes and sketches, designed to evoke mood and wonder. A
truly marvelous book!
L. Sprague de Camp has said: "Dunsany was the second writer (William Morris in the 1880's being the first) fully to exploit the possibilities of ... adventurous fantasy laid in imaginary lands, with gods, witches, spirits, and magic, like children's fairy tales but on a sophisticated adult level." But more than this, Dunsany was probably the single greatest influence on fantasy writers during the first half of the 20th century. Lovecraft, in early fiction, like the Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, imitated him, and very well. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian and founder of the popular Sword & Sorcery school of fantasy writing, read him and came under his spell, as did Clark Ashton Smith, whose exquisitely mordant fables show unmistakable traces of Dunsanian influence. And Dunsany's "Jorkens" tales are the direct progenitors of such books as Arthur C. Clarke's Tales of the White Hart and Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp's Tales of Gavagan's Bar.
Although many of his most famous stories are longer in length, the miniature portraits of Fifty-One Tales (originally published in 1915 and sometimes reprinted under the title The Food of Death) are an ideal introduction to Dunsany. Nowhere is the jewel-like quality of his prose more evident than in the short tales herein, seminal works which runs the gamut from whimsy to fantasy to social satire.
If this is your first encounter with Lord Dunsany, you will be delighted, moved, amused, and caught up in the sheer poetry of his words. If you are a return visitor to the Lands Beyond the Fields We Know, you are already aware of what sort of treat awaits you. Enjoy!
Contents:
The Assignation
Charon
The Death of Pan
The Sphinx at Giza
The Hen
Wind and Fog
The Raft-Builders
The Workman
The Guest
Death and Odysseus
Death and the Orange
The Prayer of the Flower
Time and the Tradesman
The Little City
The Unpasturable Fields
The Worm and the Angel
The Songless Country
The Latest Thing
The Demagogue and the Demi-monde
The Giant Poppy
Roses
The Man With the Golden Ear-rings
The Dream of King Karna-Vootra
The Storm
A Mistaken Identity
The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise
Alone the Immortals
A Moral Little Tale
The Return of Song
Spring In Town
How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana
A Losing Game
Taking Up Picadilly
After the Fire
The City
The Food of Death
The Lonely Idol
The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)
The Reward
The Trouble in Leafy Green Street
The Mist
Furrow-Maker
Lobster Salad
The Return of the Exiles
Nature and Time
The Song of the Blackbird
The Messengers
The Three Tall Sons
Compromise
What We Have Come To
The Tomb of Pan
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