The career of Lord Dunsany all too easily invokes the stereotype of the aristocratic literateur. By his own avowal, he was first of all a sportsman and a soldier; writing was an avocation. His plays, especially, reflect this approach, never quite losing the appearance of studied offhandedness. Though it irritated him to be thought of as a lord who writes rather than a writer who happens to be a lord, Dunsany seemed to court the attitude by repeatedly stating that he wrote only at rare intervals, under inspiration, and that he produced his work very quickly, often within a single day, and for plays, usually within a few days. Yet the stereotype is as unfair as an attempt to place Dunsany among the literary giants would be exaggerated. He is an excellent writer of short stories, an uneven writer of middling verse, an indefatigable writer of wandering autobiography, and a grinder-out of an array of plays, long and short, most of them thin in content but characteristically cleverly constructed.
