DUNSANY, Edward Plunkett, Lord.

£1,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Plays of Gods and Men. First edition, first impression, signed by the author beneath the printed facsimile signature on the frontispiece. This collection "cemented his dramatic reputation" (Joshi & Schweitzer, p. 2). It includes four works: The Laughter of the Gods, The Queen's Enemies, The Tents of the Arabs, and A Night at an Inn.Dunsany (1878-1957) was "unquestionably one of the most important writers of heroic fantasy of the century; a writer of great originality and charm" (Bleiler, p.165). He was described by Yeats as a "man in whose genius I believe", and his work influenced authors including J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin. Although these plays were published in 1917, Dunsany was keen to point out that he mostly wrote them before the war, during which he served as a captain of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, "lest any idle person might think that I have had time to write plays during the last few years" (preface). They emerged on the back of the transatlantic success of his Five Plays (1914), all of which ran simultaneously on Broadway.

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