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    Some Short Stories by Lord Dunsany (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    Some Short Stories by Lord Dunsany (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    Some Short Stories by Lord Dunsany (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
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    Some Short Stories by Lord Dunsany (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

    By Edward John Moreton Dunsany

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    Lord Dunsany was one of Ireland's finest writers. At the peak of his career he was a true literary celebrity, spending time with authors such as W. B. Yeats and Rudyard Kipling, and publishing over sixty books. Arthur C. Clarke called him "one of the greatest writers of [the 20th] century," and H. P. Lovecraft described him as being "unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous and languorous world of incandescently exotic vision." Collected here are some of Dunsany's greatest tales, including 'The Magician', 'The Field Where the Satyrs Dance' and more.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateDec 3, 2014
    ISBN9781447480341
    Some Short Stories by Lord Dunsany (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

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      Some Short Stories by Lord Dunsany (Fantasy and Horror Classics) - Edward John Moreton Dunsany

      Maux

      LORD DUNSANY

      Lord Dunsany was born Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett in London in 1878. Dunsany’s youth was spent in Dunsany, Ireland – his family home – and Kent. He attended school at Cheam and Eton, before entering the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1896. He inherited his father’s title shortly before fighting in the Second Anglo-Boer War between 1899 and 1901. Dunsany published his first book a collection of Anglo-Irish fantasy stories entitled The Gods of Pegana, in 1905.

      Over the course of his life, Dunsany was a prolific writer, penning short stories, novels, plays, poetry, essays and autobiography. During the peak of his career he was something of a literary celebrity, spending time with authors such as W. B. Yeats and Rudyard Kipling. He published over sixty books, and his plays were highly successful; at one point, five Dunsany works were running simultaneously in New York. His most notable fantasy short stories were published between 1905 and 1919, in collections such as The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories (1908), A Dreamer’s Tales (1910), The Book of Wonder (1912) and Tales of Wonder (1916). Amongst his best-regarded novels are Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley (1922), The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924), and The Charwoman’s Shadow (1926).

      Dunsany died in old age, following an attack of appendicitis. Over the course of his writing life, he greatly influenced a wide range of authors. Arthur C. Clarke called him one of the greatest writers of [the 20th] century, and H. P. Lovecraft described him as being unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous and languorous world of incandescently exotic vision.

      THE MAGICIAN

      *        *        *

      It was underground.

      In that dank cavern down below Belgrave Square the walls were dripping. But what was that to the magician? It was secrecy that he needed, not dryness. There he pondered upon the trend of events, shaped destinies and concocted magical brews.

      For the last few years the serenity of his ponderings had been disturbed by the noise of the motor-bus; while to his keen ears there came the earthquake-rumble, far off, of the train in the tube, going down Sloane Street; and what he heard of the world above his head was not to its credit.

      He decided one evening over his evil pipe, down there in his dank dark chamber, that London had lived long enough, had abused its opportunities, had gone too far, in fine, with its civilization. And so he decided to wreck it.

      Therefore he beckoned up his acolyte from the weedy end of the cavern, and, ‘Bring me,’ he said, ‘the heart of the toad that dwelleth in Arabia and by the mountains of Bethany.’ The acolyte slipped away by the hidden door, leaving that grim old man with his frightful pipe, and whither he went who knows but the gipsy people, or by what path he returned; but within a year he stood in the cavern again, slipping secretly in by the trap while the old man smoked, and he brought with him a little fleshy thing that rotted in a casket of pure gold.

      ‘What is it?’ the old man croaked.

      ‘It is,’ said the acolyte, ‘the heart of the toad that dwelt once in Arabia and by the mountains of Bethany.’

      The old man’s crooked fingers closed on it, and he blessed the acolyte with his rasping voice and claw-like hand uplifted; the motor-bus rumbled above on its endless journey; far off the train shook Sloane Street.

      ‘Come,’ said the old magician, ‘it is time.’ And there and then they left the weedy cavern, the acolyte carrying a cauldron, gold poker and all things needful, and went abroad in the light. And very wonderful the old man looked in his silks.

      Their goal was the outskirts of London; the old man strode in front and the acolyte ran behind him, and there was something magical in the old man’s stride alone, without his wonderful dress, the cauldron and wand, the hurrying acolyte and the small gold poker.

      Little boys jeered till they caught the old man’s eye. So there went on through London this strange procession of two, too swift for any to follow. Things seemed worse up there than they did in the cavern, and the further they got on their way towards London’s outskirts the worse London got. ‘It is time,’ said the old man, ‘surely.’

      And so they came at last to London’s edge and a small hill watching it with a mournful look. It was so mean that the acolyte longed for the cavern, dank though it was and full of terrible sayings that the old man said when he slept.

      They climbed the hill and put the cauldron down, and put therein the necessary things, and lit a fire of herbs that no chemist will sell nor decent gardener grow, and stirred the cauldron with the golden poker. The magician retired a little apart and muttered, then he strode back to the cauldron and, all being ready, suddenly opened the casket and let the fleshy thing fall in to boil.

      Then he made spells, then he flung up his arms; the fumes from the cauldron entering in at his mind he said raging things that he had not known before and runes that were dreadful (the acolyte screamed); there he cursed London from fog to loam-pit, from zenith to the abyss; motor-bus, factory, shop, parliament, people. ‘Let them all perish,’ he said, ‘and London pass away, tram lines and bricks and pavement, the usurpers too long of the fields, let them all pass away and the wild hares come back, blackberry and briar-rose.

      ‘Let it pass,’ he said, ‘pass now, pass utterly.’

      In the momentary silence the old man coughed, then waited

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