Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany Biography

If he is denied the first rank, he is nevertheless a serious writer whose work is informed and shaped by a world view, however narrow. Essentially, Dunsany saw mankind as living in an inimical world and subjected to capricious forces on the one hand and to meanness of spirit on the other. Still, for Dunsany, mankind had compensating qualities. Men could detect the beauty of the physical world and respond to the mystery of the supernatural one. Above all, individual men could retain their dignity in the midst of disaster by hewing to a variety of codes, that of the soldier, the aristocrat, and, above all, the sportsman. Such views made Dunsany aspire to beauty and truth in drama, having early decided that drama is governed by the same demands for form, honesty, and imagination as poetry. They also made him eschew the realistic drama of his day and hold to a poeticized (not a versified) one throughout a long career. Thus, however much he yearned for recognition as a writer, he did not too avidly seek fame in the marketplace to achieve it.