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The Lord Dunsany | |
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 Dunsany in 1919, by Morrall-Hoole Studios | |
| Born | Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett (1878-07-24)24 July 1878 London, England |
| Died | 25 October 1957(1957-10-25) (aged 79) Dublin, Ireland |
| Occupation | Writer (short story writer, playwright, novelist, poet) |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Irish, British |
| Period | 1890s to 1957 |
| Genre | High fantasy,crime,horror,science fiction,weird fiction |
| Notable works | The King of Elfland's Daughter,The Gods of Pegāna |
| Notable awards | Harmsworth Award |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Parents | John Plunkett, 17th Baron Dunsany (father) |
| Relatives | Reginald Drax (brother) |
| Military career | |
| Service | British Army,Irish Army |
| Rank | Captain |
| Unit | Coldstream Guards,Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers,Irish Army Reserve,British Home Guard |
| Battles / wars | Easter Rising,Battle of Britain |
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron DunsanyFRSL FRGS (/dʌnˈseɪni/; 24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957), commonly known asLord Dunsany, was anAnglo-Irish writer and dramatist. He published more than 90 books during his lifetime,[2][4][a] and his output consisted of hundreds of short stories, plays, novels, and essays; further works were published posthumously.[1] Having gained a name in the 1910s as a writer in the English-speaking world, he is best known today for the 1924 fantasy novelThe King of Elfland's Daughter,[1] and his first book,The Gods of Pegāna, which depicts a fictional pantheon. Many critics feel his early work laid grounds for thefantasy genre.[6]
Born in London as heir to one of the oldest Irish peerages, he was raised partly in Kent, but later lived mainly at Ireland's possibly longest-inhabited home,Dunsany Castle nearTara. He worked withW. B. Yeats andLady Gregory, and supported theAbbey Theatre and some fellow writers. He was a chess and pistol champion of Ireland, and travelled andhunted. He devised an asymmetrical game calledDunsany's chess. In later life, he was awarded an honorary doctorate fromTrinity College Dublin. He settled in Shoreham, Kent, in 1947. In 1957 he took ill when visiting Ireland and died in Dublin ofappendicitis.
Edward Plunkett (Dunsany), known to his family as "Eddie", was the first son ofJohn William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (1853–1899), and his wife, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria GrosvenorErnle-Erle-Drax (née Burton) (1855–1916).[7]
From a historically wealthy and famous family, Lord Dunsany was related to many well-known Irish figures. He was a kinsman of theCatholic SaintOliver Plunkett, the martyredArchbishop of Armagh whose ring andcrozier head are still held by the Dunsany family. He was also related to the prominent Anglo-Irish unionist and later nationalist /Home Rule politicianSir Horace Plunkett andGeorge Count Plunkett,Papal Count and Republican politician, father ofJoseph Plunkett, executed for his part in the1916 Rising.
His mother was a cousin ofSir Richard Burton, and he inherited from her considerable height, being 1.93 metres tall (6'4"). The Countess of Fingall, wife of Dunsany's cousin, theEarl of Fingall, wrote a best-selling account of the life of the aristocracy in Ireland in the late 19th century and early 20th century calledSeventy Years Young.
Plunkett's only adult sibling, a younger brother, from whom he was estranged from about 1916, for reasons not fully clear but connected to his mother's will, was the noted British naval officerSir Reginald Drax. Another younger brother died in infancy.
Edward Plunkett grew up at the family properties, notably Dunstall Priory inShoreham, Kent, andDunsany Castle in County Meath, but also in family homes such as in London. His schooling was atCheam,Eton College and theRoyal Military College, Sandhurst, which he entered in 1896.
The title passed to him at his father's death in 1899 at a fairly young age. The young Lord Dunsany returned toDunsany Castle after war duty, in 1901. In that year he was also confirmed as an elector for theIrish representative peers in theHouse of Lords.
In 1903, he met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880–1970), youngest daughter ofThe 7th Earl of Jersey (head of the Jersey banking family), who was then living atOsterley Park. They married in 1904.[8] Their one child, Randal, was born in 1906. Lady Beatrice was supportive of Dunsany's interests and helped him by typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his collections, including the 1954 retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death.
The Dunsanys were socially active inDublin and London and travelled between homes in Meath, London andKent, other than duringthe First andSecond world wars and theIrish War of Independence. Dunsany circulated with many literary figures of the time. To many of these in Ireland he was first introduced by his uncle, the co-operative pioneerSir Horace Plunkett, who also helped to manage his estate and investments for a time. He was friendly, for example, withGeorge William Russell,Oliver St. John Gogarty, and for a time,W. B. Yeats. He also socialised at times withGeorge Bernard Shaw andH. G. Wells, and was a friend ofRudyard Kipling.
In 1910 Dunsany commissioned a two-storey extension to Dunsany Castle, with a billiard room, bedrooms and other facilities. The billiard room includes the crests of all the Lords Dunsany up to the 18th.
Dunsany served as a second lieutenant in theColdstream Guards in theSecond Boer War. Volunteering in the First World War and appointed Captain in theRoyal Inniskilling Fusiliers, he was stationed for a time atEbrington Barracks in Derry. Hearing while on leave of disturbances in Dublin during theEaster Rising of 1916, he drove in to offer help and was wounded by a bullet lodged in his skull.[9][10] After recovery atJervis Street Hospital and what was then the King George V Hospital (nowSt. Bricin's Military Hospital), he returned to duty. His military belt was lost in the episode and later used at the burial ofMichael Collins. Having been refused forward positioning in 1916 and listed as valuable as a trainer, he served in the later war stages in the trenches and in the final period writing propaganda material for the War Office with MI7b(1). There is a book at Dunsany Castle with wartime photographs, on which lost members of his command are marked.
During theIrish War of Independence, Dunsany was charged with violating theRestoration of Order in Ireland Regulations, tried by court-martial on 4 February 1921, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of 25 pounds or serve three months in prison without labour. The Crown Forces had searchedDunsany Castle and had found two double-barrelled shotguns, tworook rifles, fourVery pistols, an automatic pistol and a large quantity of pistol ammunition, along with shotgun and rifle ammunition.[11]
During theSecond World War, Dunsany signed up for theIrish Army Reserve and theBritish Home Guard, the two countries' local defence forces, and was especially active inShoreham, Kent, the English village bombed most during theBattle of Britain.
Dunsany's fame arose chiefly from his prolific writings. He was involved in theIrish Literary Revival. Supporting the Revival, Dunsany was a major donor to theAbbey Theatre and he moved in Irish literary circles. He was well acquainted withW. B. Yeats (who rarely acted as editor but gathered and published a Dunsany selection),Lady Gregory,Percy French,George "AE" Russell, Oliver St John Gogarty,Padraic Colum (with whom he jointly wrote a play) and others. He befriended and supportedFrancis Ledwidge, to whom he gave the use of his library,[12] andMary Lavin.
Dunsany made his first literary tour to the United States in 1919 and further such visits up to the 1950s, in the early years mostly to the eastern seaboard and later, notably, to California.
Dunsany's own work and contribution to the Irish literary heritage were recognised with an honorary degree fromTrinity College Dublin.
In 1940, Dunsany was appointed Byron Professor of English inAthens University, Greece. Having reached Athens by a circuitous route, he was so successful that he was offered a post as Professor of English inIstanbul. However, he had to be evacuated due to theGerman invasion of Greece in April 1941, returning home by an even more complex route, his travels forming a basis for a long poem published in book form (A Journey, in 5 cantos: The Battle of Britain, The Battle of Greece, The Battle of the Mediterranean, Battles Long Ago, The Battle of the Atlantic, special edition January 1944).Olivia Manning's character Lord Pinkrose in hernovel sequence theFortunes of War was a mocking portrait of Dunsany in that period.[13][14]
In 1947, Dunsany transferred his Meath estate in trust to his son and heirRandal and settled in Kent at hisShoreham house, Dunstall Priory. He visited Ireland only occasionally thereafter, and engaged actively in life in Shoreham and London. He also began a new series of visits to the United States, notably California, as recounted in Hazel Littlefield-Smith's biographicalDunsany, King of Dreams.
In 1957, Lord Dunsany became ill while dining with theEarl and Countess of Fingall at Dunsany, in what proved to be an attack ofappendicitis. He died in hospital in Dublin, at the age of 79. He was buried in the churchyard of the ancient church of St Peter and St Paul, Shoreham, Kent. His funeral was attended by many family members (including Pakenhams, Jerseys and Fingalls), representatives of his old regiment and various bodies in which he had taken an interest, and figures from Shoreham. A memorial service was held atKilmessan in Meath, with a reading of "Crossing the Bar", which coincided with the passing of a flock of geese.
Beatrice survived Dunsany, living mainly at Shoreham and overseeing his literary legacy until her death in 1970. Their son Randal succeeded to the barony and was in turn succeeded by his grandson, the artistEdward Plunkett. Dunsany's literary rights passed from Beatrice to Edward.[citation needed]
Aside from his literary work, Dunsany was a keenchess player, setting chess puzzles for journals such asThe Times of London, playingJosé Raúl Capablanca to a draw in asimultaneous exhibition, and inventingDunsany's Chess, an asymmetricalchess variant notable for not involving anyfairy pieces, unlike the many variants that require the player to learn unconventional piece movements. He was president of both theIrish Chess Union and the Kent County Chess Association for some years and of Sevenoaks Chess Club for 54 years. His short storyThe Three Sailors' Gambit is a classic work of suspense that incorporates a strong and unique chess element into its plot.
Dunsany was an avid horseman and hunter, for many years hosting the hounds of a local hunt and hunting in parts of Africa. He was at one time thepistol-shooting champion of Ireland. Dunsany also campaigned for animal rights, being known especially for his opposition to the"docking" of dogs' tails, and presided over the West Kent branch of theRSPCA in his later years. He enjoyedcricket, provided the local cricket ground situated near Dunsany Crossroads, and later played for and presided at Shoreham Cricket Club in Kent. He was a supporter ofScouting for many years, serving as President of theSevenoaks districtBoy Scouts Association. He also supported an amateur drama group, the Shoreham Players.
Dunsany provided support for theBritish Legion in both Ireland and Kent, including grounds inTrim and poetry for the Irish branch's annual memorial service on a number of occasions.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg) | This sectionneeds expansion with: more about the writings, especially the early short stories and plays, and certain novels. You can help byadding to it.(December 2022) |
Dunsany was a prolific writer of short stories, novels, plays, poetry, essays and autobiography. He published over 90 books in his lifetime, not including individual plays. Books have continued to appear, with more than 120 having been issued by 2017. Dunsany's works have been published in many languages.
Dunsany began his literary career in the late 1890s writing under his given name, with published verses such as "Rhymes from a Suburb" and "The Spirit of the Bog". In 1905, writing as Lord Dunsany, he produced the well-received collectionThe Gods of Pegāna.[15]
Dunsany's most notable fantasy short stories appeared in collections from 1905 to 1919, before fantasy had been recognised as a distinct genre. He paid for the publication of the first collection,The Gods of Pegāna, earning a commission on sales.[16]
The stories in his first two books, and perhaps the beginning of his third, were set in an invented world, Pegāna, with its own gods, history and geography. Starting with this, Dunsany's name is linked to that ofSidney Sime, his chosen artist, who illustrated much of his work, notably up to 1922.[17]
AfterThe Book of Wonder (1912), Dunsany began to write plays – many of which were even more successful at the time than his early story collections – while continuing to write short stories. He carried on writing plays for the theatre into the 1930s, including the famousIf (1921), and also some radio productions.[18]
Although many of Dunsany's plays were successfully staged in his lifetime, he also wrote "chamber plays" orcloset dramas. Some of these chamber or radio plays involve supernatural events – a character appearing out of thin air or vanishing in full view of the audience, without an explanation of how the effect is to be staged, a matter of no importance, as Dunsany did not intend them to be performed live.
After a successful lecture tour to the United States in 1919 and 1920, Dunsany's reputation was now related principally to his plays. He 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 ofF. Scott Fitzgerald'sThis Side of Paradise. His sonnet "A Dirge of Victory" was the only poem included in the Armistice Day edition of theTimes of London.
Launching another phase of his work, Dunsany's first novel,Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley appeared in 1922. It is set in "aRomantic 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. In 1924, Dunsany published his second novel,The King of Elfland's Daughter, a return to his early style of writing. In his next novel,The Charwoman's Shadow, Dunsany returned to the Spanish milieu and the light style ofDon Rodriguez.
Among his best-known characters wasJoseph Jorkens, anobese, middle-aged raconteur who frequented the fictional Billiards Club in London and would tell fantastic stories if anyone bought him a large whiskey and soda. From his tales, it was clear that 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. TheJorkens books, which sold well, were among the first of a type that would become popular in fantasy and science fiction writing: highly improbable "club tales" told at agentleman's club or bar.
Some saw Dunsany's writing habits as peculiar. Lady Beatrice said, "He always sat on a crumpled old hat while composing his tales". (The hat was eventually stolen by a visitor to Dunsany Castle.) Dunsany almost never rewrote anything; everything he published was a first draft.[19] Much of his work was written with a quill pen he made himself; Lady Beatrice was usually the first to see the writings and would help to type them. It has been said that Lord Dunsany sometimes conceived 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.[citation needed]
Dunsany's work was translated from early on into languages that include Spanish, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Czech and Turkish – his uncle, Horace Plunkett, suggested 14 languages by the 1920s.[20]
Dunsany's style varied significantly throughout his writing career. Prominent Dunsany scholarS. 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 ofThe Book of Wonder in 1912, in which he almost seems to be parodying his lofty early style.[citation needed]
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" fromThe 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 offamine, 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.
Despite his frequent shifts of style and medium, Dunsany's thematic concerns remained essentially the same. Many of his later novels had an explicitly Irish theme, from the semi-autobiographicalThe Curse of the Wise Woman toHis Fellow Men.[21]
In his 1951 essay "Kafka and his Precursors",Jorge Luis Borges points out that Dunsany's short story "Carcassonne" resemblesFranz Kafka's novelThe Castle, which was written later. According to Borges the story is about "An invincible army of warriors departs from an infinite castle, subjugates kingdoms and sees monsters and crosses deserts and mountains, but never reaches Carcassonne, although they once catch a glimpse of it."[22]
Lord Dunsany was a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature,[35] a member and at one point President of the Authors' Society, and likewise President of the Shakespeare Reading Society from 1938 until his death in 1957, when he was succeeded bySir John Gielgud.[36]
Dunsany was also a fellow of theRoyal Geographical Society[37][38] and was an honorary member of the Institut Historique et Heraldique de France. He was initially an Associate Member of the Irish Academy of Letters, founded by Yeats and others, and later a full member. At one of their meetings, after 1922, he askedSeán Ó Faoláin, who was presiding, "Do we not toast the King?" Ó Faoláin replied that there was only one toast: to the Nation; but after it was given and O'Faolain had called for coffee, he saw Dunsany, standing quietly among the bustle, raise his glass discreetly, and whisper "God bless him".[39]
The Curse of the Wise Woman received the Harmsworth Literary Award in Ireland.
Dunsany received an honorary doctorate, D.Litt., fromTrinity College Dublin, in 1940.
In 1950, he was nominated for theNobel Prize in Literature by IrishPEN, citing his fiction, poetry, and support for younger writers. However, after a negative appraisal byPer Hallström, the Nobel Committee did not consider him for the prize,[40] which was wonthat year byBertrand Russell.[41]
In the late 1990s, a curator, J. W. (Joe) Doyle, was appointed by the estate to work at Dunsany Castle, in part to locate and organise the author's manuscripts, typescripts and other materials. Doyle found several works known to exist but thought to be "lost": the playsThe Ginger Cat and "The Murderers," someJorkens stories, and the novelThe Pleasures of a Futuroscope (later published byHippocampus Press). He also found hitherto unknown works, includingThe Last Book of Jorkens, to the first edition of which he wrote an introduction, and an unnamed 1956 short story collection, eventually published as part ofThe Ghost in the Corner and other stories in 2017.[71] Doyle was still working as curator in 2020. Some uncollected works, previously published in magazines, and some unpublished works, have been selected in consultation with them, and published in chapbooks by a US small press.[72]
Fans and scholarsS. T. Joshi andDarrell Schweitzer worked on the Dunsany œuvre for over twenty years, gathering stories, essays and reference material, for a joint initial bibliography and separate scholarly studies of Dunsany's work. An updated edition of their bibliography appeared in 2013.[73] Joshi editedThe Collected Jorkens andThe Ginger Cat and other lost plays and co-editedThe Ghost in the Corner and other stories[74] using materials unearthed by the Dunsany curator.
In the late 2000s a PhD researcher, Tania Scott from theUniversity of Glasgow, worked on Dunsany for some time and spoke at literary and other conventions; her thesis was published in 2011, entitledLocating Ireland in the fantastic fiction of Lord Dunsany.[75] A Swedish fan, Martin Andersson, was also active in research and publication in the mid-2010s.[74][76]
An hour-long documentary,Shooting for the Butler, was released by Auteur TV and Justified Films in 2014, directed by Digby Rumsey. With footage from Dunsany and Shoreham, it included interviews with the author's great-grandson, the estate's curator, authorLiz Williams, scholar S. T. Joshi, a local who knew the writer personally, and the head of the Irish Chess Union, among others.[77]
Dunsany's literary rights passed to a will trust first managed by Beatrice, Lady Dunsany, and are currently handled by Curtis Brown of London and partner firms worldwide. (Some past US deals, for example, have been listed by Locus Magazine as by SCG.)[citation needed] A few Dunsany works are protected for longer than normal copyright periods in some territories, notably most of the contents of theLast Book of Jorkens,[78] and some short stories published on the Dunsany website or elsewhere by the family in the early 2000s.[citation needed]
Dunsany's primary home, over 820 years old, can be visited at certain times. Tours usually include the Library, but not the tower room where he often liked to work. His other home, Dunstall Priory, was sold to an admirer,Grey Gowrie, later head of the Arts Council of the UK, and then passed to other owners. The family still owns a farm and downland in the area and a Tudor cottage in Shoreham village.[79] The grave of Dunsany and his wife can be seen in the church graveyard there. (Most previous barons are buried in the grounds of Dunsany Castle.)[citation needed]
Dunsany's manuscripts are collected in the family archive, including some specially bound volumes of some of his works. Scholarly access is possible through the curator. Seven boxes of Dunsany's papers are held at theHarry Ransom Center.[80]
{{cite web}}:Missing or empty|title= (help)I admire and constantly rereadM. R. James, Dunsany andHearn....
... His The House of the Worm, a book-length pastiche of Lovecraft and Dunsany, published recently by Arkham House...
| Peerage of Ireland | ||
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| Preceded by | Baron Dunsany 1899–1957 | Succeeded by |
