Lord Dunsany

Signed limited first edition of this keystone of the fantasy genre, one of only 250 copies signed by both the author and the illustrator.

• Lord Dunsany (Irish).
• London & New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [1924].
• 302 pages, some gatherings unopened.
• Full-page black-and-white frontispiece in photogravure, with tissue guard.
• Numbered 209 of 250 copies.
• Signed by Dunsany to preface and by Sime to frontispiece.
• Bound in original quarter vellum binding with brown cloth boards, leather title plate to spine, top edge gilt, other edges deckle, marbled endpapers, and brown silk pagemarker.

The King of Elfland's Daughter “did much to give geographical reality to the secondary universe of high fantasy,” according to John Clute and Peter Nichols. Lord Dunsany’s cast of nobles, fairies, and comedic trolls adventuring across fantasy landscapes “exerted a potent influence on later writers” including Tolkien and Lovecraft (Clute and Nicholas). Traces of Dunsany’s pioneering themes and explorations are woven throughout much of modern fantasy, in the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, Peter S. Beagle, Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, and more. “One of the seminal fantasies of the century.” – John Clute and John Grant.

John Clute and Peter Nichols, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

John Clute and John Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy.