The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
First edition | |
Author | Lord Dunsany |
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Illustrator | Sidney Sime |
Language | English |
Genre | Fantasy |
Publisher | George Allen & Sons |
Publication date | 1908 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Print (hardback) |
Preceded by | Time and the Gods |
Followed by | A Dreamer's Tales |
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories is the third book by Anglo-Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, considered a major influence on the work of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, and others. It was first published in hardcover by George Allen & Sons in October 1908, and has been reprinted a number of times since. Issued by the Modern Library in a combined edition with A Dreamer's Tales as A Dreamer's Tales and Other Stories in 1917.
The book is a series of short stories. One of the stories, "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth", was afterwards (1910) published by itself as a separate book, a now very-rare "Art-and-Craft"-style limited edition.
Contents
- "The Sword of Welleran"
- "The Fall of Babbulkund"
- "The Kith of the Elf-Folk"
- "The Highwayman"
- "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"
Reception
The Irish Times review described Dunsany's stories as "baffling", but called his style beautiful and his imagination strange but "captivating". It predicted that he would not be popular, but that he would have a cult following. It also praised Sime's illustrations.[1]
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories marked the end of Dunsany's writing about Pegāna and the beginning of a new phase of his career, in which he wrote heroic fantasies in a more modern style. Darrell Schweitzer states that this period included much of his best work.[2] "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" was one of the chief influences on sword and sorcery fiction.[3][4] Another important breakthrough was that Dunsany was writing short stories; heroic fantasy's forerunners were usually lengthy works.[2]
References
- ^ "The Sword of Welleran". Irish Times. 16 October 1908. JSTOR 48536155. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
- ^ a b Schweizer, Darrell (1989). Pathways to Elfland: The Writings of Lord Dunsany. Wildside Press. pp. 12–14, 17–18. ISBN 9781587151330. Archived from the original on 14 August 2023. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
- ^ Clute, John (1997). "Dunsany, Lord". In Clute, John; Grant, John (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. London: Orbit. Retrieved 3 August 2023.
- ^ Landow, George P. (Spring 1979). "And the World Became Strange: Realms of Literary Fantasy". The Georgia Review. 33 (1): 7–42. JSTOR 41397679. Archived from the original on 31 July 2023. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
Sources
- Joshi, S. T. (1993). Lord Dunsany: a Bibliography / by S. T. Joshi and Darrell Schweitzer. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. pp. 2–3.
External links
- The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories at Project Gutenberg
- First edition of The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories at the Internet Archive
- The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories public domain audiobook at LibriVox
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collections
- The Gods of Pegāna
- 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
- The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens
- Jorkens Remembers Africa
- Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey
- The Fourth Book of Jorkens
- The Man Who Ate the Phoenix
- The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories
- Jorkens Borrows Another Whiskey
- The Last Book of Jorkens
collections
- At the Edge of the World
- Beyond the Fields We Know
- Over the Hills and Far Away
- The Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer, and Other Fantasms
- Time and the Gods
- The Collected Jorkens
- In the Land of Time, and Other Fantasy Tales
- Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley
- The King of Elfland's Daughter
- The Charwoman's Shadow
- The Curse of the Wise Woman
- Sidney Sime (preferred artist)
- John Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (father)
- Reginald Drax (brother)
- Dunsany Castle
- Edward Plunkett, 20th Baron of Dunsany (grandson and literary heir)
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