The most interesting thing I’ve learned about Lord Dunsany since writing the last entry is that it’s not pronounced Dun-SAY-ny, not DUN-sa-ny as I’ve always said it. My brief experience with Celtic languages tells me that it makes sense, since in those languages emphasis usually falls on the penultimate syllable of a word. Since Dunsany is an Irish place name and not a given name (Lord Dunsany is his title, his given name is Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett), I had one of those “Oh, duh!” moments when I read the proper pronunciation of his name. Like I said, it just makes sense.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the most interesting thing I’ve found out. After making my last post about Dunsany, I did a little research online to find out more about him. The first site I found is a biography and bibiliography maintained on the official homepage of the Dunsany family, castle and estate (or you can go over to the a profile and bibliography at Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works, and essay, Lord Dunsany: The Potency of Words and the Wonder of Things that was originally published in Mythlore, a collection of some of his works at Undecay, and a brief overview (oddly classified under “Supernatural Horror” with more links and publication listings.

That’s about as far as I got when I was diverted by the lovely Beyond the Fields We Know, a lovely site which is not about Dunsany per se but myth and story in general. The title, of course, comes from Dunsany’s most famous work, The King of Elfland’s Daughter. But the site is a more personal journey through topics that are important to the author, featuring on essays with evocative titles such as “On Thresholds and Liminal Places” and “If These Stones Could Speak”. It makes good use of imagery without falling into the kitchy trap that so many “fantasy” oriented sites seem to.

My exploration of the site ended my web quest for Dunsany materials, though, so I don’t have much more to offer on that end right now. There seems to be a great many of his works on line, the earliest ones, at least, that have outlived their copyright. Right now, he’s seeing a resurgance in print as well, as you can see from the Dunsanny.net bookstore. Aside from Dunsany’s own work, there are a couple of volumes of scholarship that I myself would like to investigate, particularly Darrell Schweitzer’s Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany and S.T. Joshi’s Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination (the two of them have also collaborated on a published bibiliography of Dunsany’s works). Additionally, there is a volume of correspondence between Dunsany and Arthur C. Clarke, which looks like it is probably very interesting. I am wondering if any of these books have found their way into my public library, or if I’ll have to start checking out the local universities.

What’s not listed on the bookstore page, though, is a new compilation of Dunsany’s work put out by Penguin Classics. I didn’t know about that until the current issue of Realms of Fantasy arrived in my mailbox last week, with a review of the volume by Gahan Wilson. With an introduction and notes by the above mentioned Joshi, the book features a selection of Dunsany’s most important short works from his long and very prolific career. I had to go and get a copy for myself, which brings me up to the present in my current Dunsany study phase.

I’ve just begun to dip into the book, and am happy to have my instinct confirmed, that The Gods of Pegana (self-published in 1904, which makes this year a very appropriate one for my study, I suppose — I wonder if anyone is planning any Dunsany centennial celebrations?) was the first work of it’s kind, the first to create a mythic world for it’s own sake. From the introduction:

What Dunsany had done was to create an entire cosmogony, complete with a pantheon of ethereal but balefully powerful gods — a cosmogony, however, whose aim was n ot the fashioning of an ersatz religion that made any claim to metaphysical truth, but rather the embodiment of Oscar Wilede’s imperishable dictum, “The artist is the creator of beautiful things.”

And The Gods of Pegana is certainly a beautiful thing. I’ve written about Dunsany before, in a review of The King of Elfland’s Daughter, but I think my appreciation for his prose has grown in the years since I called it “bordering on purple.” There’s nothing extraneous or excessive in his writing — each word is chosen with care. It is still slow reading, but mostly because I have to keep going back and rereading the best passages. It’s like poetry, not to be rushed through, devoured all at once like the best modern novels, but tasted and savored and enjoyed thoroughly before moving on.

Have I said that you should read Dunsany? If you haven’t, you should.