Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett 18th Baron Dunsany

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany, 18th Baron , 1878-1957, Anglo-Irish author. His life was spent as a soldier and sportsman. Often dealing with the fantastic and the supernatural, his works are frequently set in wholly imaginary worlds and involve myths and legends of his own making. Lord Dunsany's plays include The Glittering Gate (1909), The Gods of the Mountain (1911), The Golden Doom (1912), and the one-act play A Night at an Inn (1916). His prose works include A Dreamer's Tales (1910), The Book of Wonder (1912), My Talks with Dean Spanley (1936), The Story of Mona Sheehy (1937), and A Glimpse from a Watch Tower (1946). Enormously popular in the early years of the century, Dunsany's work fell out of favor as modernism claimed literary taste in the years following World War I.

Bibliography: See his selected tales in In the Land of Time (2004); biography by M. Amory (1972).

Dunsany, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron (1878–1957), of Anglo-Irish parentage, was associated with the Irish revival, and a friend of Yeats, Gogarty, and Lady Gregory. His first book of (non-Celtic) mythological tales, The Gods of Pegana (1905), was illustrated by S. H. Sime, whose weird fin-de-siècle drawings were to accompany many subsequent fantasies, including The Book of Wonder (1912) and The Blessing of Pan (1927). Dunsany's first play, The Glittering Gate, was performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1909; this and many later plays show the influence of Maeterlinck's not dissimilar vein of fantasy. If (an Oriental tale) was a success in London in 1921. Dunsany wrote the popular ‘Jorkens’ stories, beginning with The Travel Tales of Mr Joseph Jorkens (1931).