Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!*'s Reviews > The King of Elfland's Daughter

My path to Lord Dunsany was via H.P. Lovecraft. Reading The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, many of his most enchanting stories were from what was called his Dunsanian period. This led me to this source material, the best known of Lord Dunsany's many written things and the only one available through my library. I shall be on the lookout for other material should it cross my path in the future.

His real name: Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett. That's a banger of a name.

This was a dreamlike, fantastic journey into the realms of fairy. The influence of this work on modern fantasy is undeniable. It's easy to picture a straight line from this book to The Lord of the Rings, The Wise Man’s Fear, Stardust, Lords and Ladies, Evermeet: Island of Elves, in truth any book that conceives of a magical realm of elves or fairies accessible from our own world. Of course the legends and fairy tales preceded this book, but it captured them in such a poetic and evocative way, the influence of this specific work is undeniable.

I could have done with a few less instances of the phrase, "the fields we know," as iconic as it is to this work. But I'll take it along with the hauntingly beautiful descriptions and invocations of nature and light. The language is truly ethereal, from a time when that word meant something, before generative A.I. got a hold of it.

If you're a long-time fantasy reader, a fantasy historian, a classicist, or simply any kind of inveterate dreamer, it's worth it to seek out this book. It's in the public domain; Project Gutenberg is a worthy source.