Critical Essay | Critical Essay by S. T. Joshi

Critical Essay by S. T. Joshi

SOURCE: "Lord Dunsany: The Career of a Fantaisiste," in his The Weird Tale: Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft, University of Texas Press, 1990, pp. 42-86.

An American editor and critic, Joshi is the leading figure in H. P. Lovecraft scholarship and criticism. In the following excerpt, he traces prominent themes, concepts, and imagery in Dunsany's works.

Considering Dunsany's intangible subject-matter, his imagination has an incredible vividness—the very wind that blows up over the edge of the world has a strange, metallic taste from the wandering stars. It is a highly romantic imagination, too: nature not only takes its coloring from the beholder's mood, … but it anticipates and forebodes.

—Emma Garrett Boyd, in her "Lord
Dunsany, Dreamer," in The Forum, April,
1917.

The career of Lord Dunsany is a peculiar one. After achieving spectacular fame with early short stories and plays about...
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