What an odd read this one was. I was thinking I haven’t done almost any fantasy except for Raymond Feist books, so I went looking for an influential piece of old fantasy that I didn’t know much about.
I stumbled onto this 1924 novel by Lord Dunsany, a.k.a. Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany, and found something unique, weird, and often frustrating.
Before we dig in, it’s worth noting that this book predates The Hobbit by 13 years, and even the first big swords and sorcery stories by people like Robert E. Howard. In fact, according to what I read, it kind of predates the proliferation of fantasy as a genre of fiction. At the time, most stories with fantasy elements were either adaptations of existing myths, or modern or near-past settings with fantastic elements that read more like adventures. Other stories with a strong speculative nature were usually some form of science fiction. The Ruritanian Adventure genre was in its last years.
As such, The King of Elfland’s Daughter is like a bolt out of the blue compared to what was making the rounds in popular fiction at the time. It presents a fantasy Earth ostensibly several hundred years in the past, and provides only the most tenuous and sarcastic connection to the real world.
Lord Dunsany presents a deeply fairy-tale-esque tale about the border between “the fields we know” and the magical Elfland.
In Dunsany’s world, the kingdom of Erl lies on the border with the magical Elfland, and the people of Erl claim they want a magical lord. The old king’s solution is to send his son to Elfland to find a magical wife. As far as that goes, it’s practically the simplest—almost so simple that it’s silly—plot you could imagine.
The story develops against so many tropes and conventions of fiction that it’s actually frustrating at some points. There are so many bits of detail that feel like set-ups, only to have no pay-off. The magical world of Elfland is characterized by its deep calm, and feels almost uninhabited, despite its musical winds and vibrant colors and thick, blue air. Later on, Tolkien would master the techniques required to make a fantasy world feel lush, but Dunsany had not.
Dunsany’s book is not quite a children’s book, but it has many elements of one. It might be an excellent book to read a child before bedtime. Its tone is sing-songy without being poetic, its style flowery and metaphorical while remaining vague enough to avoid being a simple allegory. To borrow from Tolkien, The King of Elfland’s Daughter is closer to feigned history than allegory. Paragraphs are long and chapters are short. We get plot points that echo common proverbs, like “be careful what you wish for,” or “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” The world is bright and generally peaceful, and fits along with other fairy tales as the setting of an excellent bedtime story.
The vocabulary borrows heavily from dictionaries at least a hundred years out of date, at the time Dunsany was writing. “Chaunt” hadn’t been commonly used, in favor of “chant,” for about that long, and “beeves,” as a plural of “beef,” to describe a group of cows or oxen, was on its way out. Dunsany’s use of “Freer” instead of “Friar” is apparently a Middle English influence. Fortunately, everything can be clearly reasoned from context clues, and the rest of the book’s vocabulary is suitable for intelligent children.
Dunsany avoids elements which are now often seen as necessary to a book’s enjoyment. The antagonism between the King of Elfland and Alveric, the young man who just eloped with his daughter, is strong but not violent. There are no elaborate battles, no bombastic magical visuals. There are also a huge number of events and descriptions that seem like set-ups for a later pay-off, but oftentimes the pay-off never comes! Even the ending is abrupt and happens without the developments you’ve been expecting for half the book.
Perhaps the strangest portion of the book is the chapter Dunsany dedicates to connecting the story to “a fact of history.” He sarcastically and Quixotically says that an object in the story is related to a gift between Pope Clement and King Francis in 1530. He complains that many readers don’t think a story is worth reading without some tangible connection to history, and states uncryptically that this is because those people are interested in history, not philosophy. It reads as a lampoon, and the tone is so different from the rest of the book that I can’t help but believe Dunsany was grinding a personal axe.
What else can I say without spoiling things? I thought the book was interesting because of how unique it was for its time, and for the unconventional choices Dunsany made. But those unconventional choices could also be quite frustrating. The prose is good but the unconventional structure can be vexing. It’s far from the typical “Hero’s Journey,” and notable for that reason, too.
I also found it interesting that Tolkien, Lovecraft, and Le Guin claimed Dunsany had a strong influence on them. Certainly the book is worth a look on those grounds as well.
I recommend this book to people who are fans of those authors, or are interested in the history of the fantasy genre in general. As I mentioned earlier, this might also be a great book to read to children. It’s not too difficult and has almost no objectionable content. There’s a bit where Dunsany gets a little too enthusiastic about the blood-thirst of hunting hounds, but it’s not graphic, and no worse than what plenty of fairy tales were like before they were even more infantilized by modern tinkerers.
Also, as a book from 1924, it’s out of copyright and can be read for free, here.
As always, there are more spoilers in the embedded video, if you’re interested.
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