Eddison, E R

Entry updated 9 December 2024. Tagged: Author.

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(1882-1945) UK civil servant, author and scholar of Old Norse, whose first work of fiction and most famous single work,The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance (1922), is an eruditeHeroic Fantasy written in a potently archaized English which plays off (but does not ape) the Jacobean style and matter of authors like John Webster (circa 1579-?1638), though the most direct influence on its actual structure may be H RiderHaggard'sEric Brighteyes (1890). The notional protagonist, Lessingham, is transported from Earth to a version ofMercury far more deeply irradiated by fantasy than normal in even the more extravagantPlanetary Romances; here it will be his primary function to observe mighty conflicts, heraldic battles and quests, and magical turns of plot, all destined to recur forever, as the title implies. TheZimiamvian trilogy, whose internal chronology reverses that of publication, is made up ofThe Mezentian Gate (1958), posthumously assembled,A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941) andMistress of Mistresses: A Vision of Zimiamvia (1935); all three are assembled asZimiamvia: A Trilogy (omni1992). Beyond the presence of Lessingham, who has become (like all the cast) an avatar of the divine, the sequence's main connection withThe Worm Ouroboros is that it is set in a (Platonic) heaven of the earlier novel full of echoes of Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy; the sequence shares some characteristics of the Afterlife Fantasy. The tales are discursive, metaphysical, learned, linguistically adventurous and engrossing.

Even earlier in life than J R RTolkien or Austin TappanWright, Eddison had engaged in private world-building games, and had laid down long before their publication much of the raw material from which his mature novels would grow. As with Tolkien and others, the apocalypse ofWorld War One was creatively energizing, andThe Worm Ouroboros was begun consciously in reaction to the end of the old Europe. Eddison's influence on the sf genre comes partly through the indirect but potent example of his world-building response to the progress of the twentieth century, and partly through the powerful example of his language, the sustained "otherness" of his creation. [JC]

see also:Fantasy; TheInklings;Sword and Sorcery.

Eric Rücker Eddison

born Adel, Yorkshire: 24 November 1882

died Marlborough, Wiltshire: 18 August 1945

works

series

Zimiamvia

Mistress of Mistresses: A Vision of Zimiamvia (London: Faber and Faber,1935) [Zimiamvia: hb/Keith Henderson]
A Fish Dinner in Memison (New York: E P Dutton and Co,1941) [Zimiamvia: hb/nonpictorial]
The Mezentian Gate (London: The Curwen Press,1958) [Zimiamvia: hb/nonpictorial]
- Zimiamvia: A Trilogy (New York: Dell Books,1992) [omni of the above three: with some additional material:Zimiamvia: pb/Keith Henderson]

individual titles

The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance (London: Jonathan Cape,1922) [see text for remote connection toZimiamvia: illus/hb/Keith Henderson]
Styrbiorn the Strong (London: Jonathan Cape,1926) [hb/Keith Henderson]
Egil's Saga: Done into English Out of the Icelandic with an Introduction, Notes, and an Essay on Some Principles of Translation (London: Cambridge University Press,1930) [trans by Eddison of theIceland saga: hb/nonpictorial]

about the author

L Spraguede Camp. "Superman in a Bowler: E.R. Eddison" inLiterary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House,1976) [nonfiction: coll: hb/TimKirk]
BrianAttebery. "TheZimiamvian Trilogy" inSurvey of Modern Fantasy Literature (Pasadena, California: Salem Press,1983) edited by Frank NMagill [nonfiction: published in five volumes: hb/nonpictorial]
Jonathan Preece. "The Heroic Hereafter: Explaining Eddison" inWormwood Number 1 (Leyburn, North Yorkshire: Tartarus Press,2003) edited by Mark Valentine [anth/magazine: pb/nonpictorial]