What do you think?
Rate this book
Lord Dunsany Super Pack: The Gods of Pegana; Time and the Gods; The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories; A Dreamers Tales; The Book of Wonder; Fifty-One ... & more
Collected here in this giant omnibus edition are twelve of Lord Dunsany’s greatest books including 'The Gods of Pegana', 'Time and the Gods', 'The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories', 'A Dreamer’s Tales', 'The Book of Wonder', 'Fifty-One Tales', 'The Last Book of Wonder', 'Tales of Three Hemispheres', 'Tales of War', 'Unhappy Far-Off Things', 'Plays of Gods and Men', 'Don Rodriguez Chronicles of Shadow Valley'. Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett was the 18th Baron of Dunsany, better known as Lord Dunsany. He began writing fantasy in the 1890s and helped shape modern fantasy. Authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, and Neil Gaiman all owe a deep debt to Dunsany’s work. "Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here." Included here are ‘Of Skarl the Drummer’; ‘Of the Making of the Worlds’; ‘Of the Game of the Gods’; ‘The Chaunt of the Gods’; ‘The Sayings of Kib’; ‘Concerning Sish’; ‘The Sayings of Slid’; ‘The Deeds of Mung’; ‘The Chaunt of the Priests’; ‘The Sayings of Limpang-Tung’; ‘Of Yoharneth-Lahai’; ‘Of Roon, the God of Going, and the Thousand Home Gods’; ‘The Revolt of the Home Gods’; ‘Of Dorozhand’; ‘The Eye in the Waste’; ‘Of the Thing That Is Neither God Nor Beast’; ‘Yonath the Prophet’; ‘Yug the Prophet’; ‘Alhireth-Hotep The Prophet’; ‘Kabok The Prophet’; ‘Of the Calamity That Befel Yun-ilara by the Sea, and of the Building of the Tower of the Ending of Days’; ‘Of How the Gods Whelmed Sidith’; ‘Of How Imbaun Became High Prophet in Aradec of all the Gods Save One’; ‘Of How Imbaun Met Zodrak’; ‘Pegana’; ‘The Sayings of Imbaun’; ‘Of How Imbaun Spake of Death to the King’; ‘Of Ood’; ‘The River’; ‘The Bird of Doom and THE END’; ‘Time and the Gods’; ‘The Coming of the Sea’; ‘A Legend of the Dawn’; ‘The Vengeance of Men’; ‘When the Gods Slept’; ‘The King That Was Not’; ‘The Cave of Kai’; ‘The Sorrow of Search’; ‘The Men of Yarnith’; ‘For the Honour of the Gods’; ‘Night and Morning’; ‘Usury’; ‘Mlideen’; ‘The Secret of the Gods’; ‘The South Wind’; ‘In the Land of Time’; ‘The Relenting of Sarnidac’; ‘The Jest of the Gods’; ‘The Dreams of the Prophet’; ‘The Journey of the King’; ‘The Sword of Welleran’; ‘The Fall of Babbulkund’; ‘The Kith of the Elf-Folk’; ‘The Highwaymen ‘; ‘In the Twilight’; ‘The Ghosts’; ‘The Whirlpool’; ‘The Hurricane’; ‘The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth’; ‘The Lord of Cities ‘; ‘The Doom of La Traviata’; ‘On the Dry Land’; ‘Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean’; ‘Blagdaross’; ‘The Madness of Andelsprutz’; ‘Where the Tides Ebb and Flow’; ‘Bethmoora’; ‘Idle Days on the Yann’; ‘The Sword and the Idol’; ‘The Idle City’; ‘The Hashish Man’; ‘Poor Old Bill’; ‘The Beggars’; ‘Carcassonne’; ‘In Zaccarath’; ‘The Field’; ‘The Day of the Poll’; ‘The Unhappy Body’; ‘The Bride of the Man-horse’; ‘Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller’; ‘The Ho
1365 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 5, 2015
31 people are currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Lord Dunsany
648 books803 followersEdward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 30, 2024
I enjoyed this a great deal but I have some caveats. I had thought I was buying Dunsany’s collected works but this is not the case – although the book is over a thousand pages, it does not include works such as “The King of Elfland’s Daughter”. And yet, somewhat misleadingly, this is billed as a “complete collection.” This is only true in the sense that it is a complete collection of Dunsany’s short stories, not his complete works.
Some of the writing is astonishingly good and there are some masterful short stories – some of the best only a couple of pages long. The “Fifty Four Tales” include some of these – but they also include some examples which, to my mind, don’t work quite so well. “The Gods of Pergana”, which many love, I was a bit lukewarm about; and the “Tales of War” – based on the author’s own traumatic service in the trenches of the First World War – are compassionate but sombre. I really liked “Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley” which is a glorious picaresque romp through sixteenth century Spain, calling to mind Cervantes, Le Morte D’Arthur, and Latin American magic realism. At his best, Dunsany is a master story teller whose glittering prose gives evidence of a powerful and unique imaginative vision. But – with so many tales included – it is a bit uneven, and not everything works equally well.
In Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy the character Lord Pinkrose is apparently based on the author. It’s fair to say Dunsany emerges poorly from the characterisation. Although it’s also clear that he and Manning detested each other, and she was difficult, so it’s likely to be somewhat unfair.
Most of these tales were written at Dunsany Castle, which it is pleasing to note is now owned by the 20th Baron (the author’s great grandson), and has been in near continuous occupation by the Dunsany family since the 12th century.
Some of the writing is astonishingly good and there are some masterful short stories – some of the best only a couple of pages long. The “Fifty Four Tales” include some of these – but they also include some examples which, to my mind, don’t work quite so well. “The Gods of Pergana”, which many love, I was a bit lukewarm about; and the “Tales of War” – based on the author’s own traumatic service in the trenches of the First World War – are compassionate but sombre. I really liked “Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley” which is a glorious picaresque romp through sixteenth century Spain, calling to mind Cervantes, Le Morte D’Arthur, and Latin American magic realism. At his best, Dunsany is a master story teller whose glittering prose gives evidence of a powerful and unique imaginative vision. But – with so many tales included – it is a bit uneven, and not everything works equally well.
In Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy the character Lord Pinkrose is apparently based on the author. It’s fair to say Dunsany emerges poorly from the characterisation. Although it’s also clear that he and Manning detested each other, and she was difficult, so it’s likely to be somewhat unfair.
Most of these tales were written at Dunsany Castle, which it is pleasing to note is now owned by the 20th Baron (the author’s great grandson), and has been in near continuous occupation by the Dunsany family since the 12th century.
April 5, 2024
I have spent weeks wandering through Lord Dunsany’s writings. Much of what is included here is repetitive, but I was interested in his style as much as the content. His plays and political essays were clever but a bit hard to follow, not knowing the actual politics of the time. If you do not feel inclined to lose yourself in Dunsany’s fantasy I suggest sampling “Tales of War” for very moving and disturbing descriptions of the horrors of World War I, and “Time and the Gods” for perspective on what is important in life. I think this quote, from Idle Days on the Yann will show you what you have to look forward to: “... find my way by strange means back to those hazy fields that all poets know, wherein stand small mysterious cottages through whose windows, looking westwards, you may see the fields of men, and looking eastwards see glittering elfin mountains, tipped with snow, going range on range into the region of Myth, and beyond it into the kingdom of Fantasy, which pertain to the Lands of Dream.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews