Biography
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany; 24 July 1878 - 25 October 1957), was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work, mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than ninety books of his work were published in his lifetime and both original work and compilations have continued to appear. Dunsany's oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as plays, novels and essays. He achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays, and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world; he is today best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter.
Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Ireland's longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and traveled and hunted extensively. He died in Dublin after an attack of appendicitis.
Writers influenced by Dunsany (Removed from Wikipedia)
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, his dark pseudo-history of how the universe came to be, and his god Azathoth all clearly show Dunsany's influence. Lovecraft once wrote, "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces-but alas-where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
Robert E. Howard included Dunsany in a list of his favorite poets in a 1932 letter to Lovecraft. Lovecraft also wrote a poem about Dunsany.
Clark Ashton Smith was familiar with Dunsany's work, and it had some influence on his own fantasy stories.
J. R. R. Tolkien, according to John D. Rateliff's report,[28] presented Clyde S. Kilby with a copy of The Book of Wonder as kind of a preparation to his auxiliary role in the compilation and development of The Silmarillion during the Sixties.[29] Tolkien's letters and divulged notes made allusions to two of the stories found in this volume, "Chu-Bu and Sheemish" and "The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller."
Dale J. Nelson has argued in Tolkien Studies 01 that Tolkien may have been inspired by another of The Book of Wonder's tales, "The Hoard of the Gibbelins," while writing one of his poems, "The Mewlips," included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
Guillermo Del Toro, the filmmaker, has cited Dunsany as an influence.
Neil Gaiman has expressed admiration for Dunsany and has written an introduction to a collection of his stories. Some commentators have posited links between The King of Elfland's Daughter and Gaiman's Stardust (book and film), a connection seemingly supported by a comment of Gaiman's quoted in The Neil Gaiman Reader.
Jorge Luis Borges included Dunsany's short story "The Idle City" in Antología DE la Literatura Fantástica (1940, revised 1976), a collection of short works Borges selected and provided forewords for. Borges also, in his essay "Kafka and His Precursors," included Dunsany's story "Carcassonne" as one of the texts that presaged, or paralleled, Kafka's themes.
Donald Wandrei, in a 7 February 1927 letter to H.P. Lovecraft, listed Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter among his collection of "weird books" that Wandrei had read.
Talbot Mundy greatly admired Dunsany's "plays and fantasy", according to Mundy biographer Brian Taves.
C. M. Kornbluth was an avid reader of Dunsany as a young man, and mentions Dunsany in his short fantasy story "Mr. Packer Goes to Hell" (1941).
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 and that essay acknowledges the link between Jorkens and Tales from the White Hart. Clarke states, humorously, that any reader who sees a link between the two works will *not* be hearing from his solicitors.
Manly Wade Wellman esteemed Dunsany's fiction.
Margaret St. Clair was an admirer of Dunsany's work, and her story "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" (1951) is a sequel to Dunsany's "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon the Gnoles".
Evangeline Walton stated in an interview that Dunsany inspired her to write fantasy.
Jack Vance was a keen reader of Dunsany's work as a child.
Michael Moorcock often cites Dunsany as a strong influence.
Peter S. Beagle also cites Dunsany as an influence, and wrote an introduction for one of the recent reprint editions.
David Eddings once named Lord Dunsany as his personal favorite fantasy writer, and recommended aspiring authors to sample him.
Gene Wolfe used one of Dunsany's poems to open his bestselling 2004 work The Knight.
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. 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.
M. J. Engh has acknowledged Lord Dunsany as an influence on her work.
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.
Gary Myers's 1975 short story collection The House of the Worm is a double pastiche of Dunsany and Lovecraft.
Álvaro Cunqueiro openly admitted the influence of Lord Dunsany on his work.
