The King of Elfland’s Daughter

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1. 

   A. C. H. Bergh @ 10:47 am

   When Terry Goodkind’s “Soul of the Fire” – part of one of those multi-volume “epic” fantasy series so popular these days – was not yet released, Amazon readers had already posted a few hundred reviews of the book, almost all of which rated it at 5 stars. None of them had read a word of what they were reviewing, but that didn’t stop them.

   At the time of writing this, there are just a handful of reviews of Dunsany’s “The King of Elfland’s Daughter”, which was first published in 1924 and which is one of the true classic fantasies of all time. And I doubt a great number will follow.

   That’s fashion for you.

   Still, in about twenty or thirty years from now, I very much doubt if a lot of fantasy afficianados will be able to remember Terry Goodkind at all (let alone “Soul of the Fire”). But I do know that they’ll remember Dunsany. As they will William Morris, E.R. Eddison, C.S. Lewis, and – of course – J.R.R. Tolkien.

   You see, these are the original masters of fantasy. A lot of good – at times great – fantasy has been written since then (writers like Patricia McKillip, Stephen Donaldson, Ursula LeGuin, Guy Gavriel Kay come to mind), but these are the Old Ones. The ones, if you like, Who Knew What They Were Talking About.

   To explain (in the case of Dunsany): a few years back, when in Ireland, I tried to visit the Dunsany ancestral home (yes, this is real aristocracy). I remember asking a local farmer for directions; then, after a little searching, I found a secluded gateway. I drove up the lane, crowded with trees, turned right – and there it was. One of the most beautiful and hospitable – and very real – castles you could imagine. And it suddenly dawned on me: if you lived in such a place – if your family had, for generations, lived in such a place, in such a troubled country, with so much pain and turmoil – you probably couldn’t help but turn to some sort of fantasy. And that fantasy couldn’t help but be more true than what all of us could come up with, munching our microwaved Internet dinners before flickering monitors and filing billion dollar law suits against any company that produces potentially harmful products.

   Not knowing where it came from, it’s easy for us to try to decide what good fantasy is – it seems we don’t even need to read to book to review it – but we might do well do realise, every now and then, that some of it was written with a far greater perspective than we could aspire to.

   In the end, “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” is one of the masterpieces of early fantasy. It takes a little getting used to – like Henry James, for example – but if you like fantasy fiction at all, you must read this book. It is one of the very few fantasy books that if worth just about any price you pay for it.

   One final remark: an absolutely excellent collection of Dunsany’s shorter fiction was recently published by Victor Gollancz under the title “Time And The Gods” (Fantasy Masterworks Series). As far as I know, this has not been published in the US, but you should be able to get it from Amazon.co.uk. Buy it immediately; these stories will probably be out of print again very soon.

   
2. 

   Ian M. Slater @ 12:28 pm

   Another review, after three-dozen? Is anything of interest left to be said about this 1924 fantasy novel by Lord Dunsany?

   Well, yes., I think that there is. The confusion expressed by some reviewers is easy to understand. After more than three quarters of a century, “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” remains remarkably hard to place. Not absolutely unique on the level of details, it stands apart when seen as a whole. Although the author’s copious and skillful writing in an improbable variety of genres set him apart from the rest of the Anglo-Irish Peerage, he seems to have shared their assumption that a man of his position and rank could do as he pleased, when he pleased. Including what he wanted to write.

   As a result, this book won’t fit into any neat category, whether it existed then, or emerged later.

   The book seems to open with an idealized medieval scene, like one of the late-Victorian medieval romances by William Morris (“The Wood Beyond the World” or “The Well at the World’s End”). We meet the old, wise, and patient lord of Erl, and the skilled and industrious people of Erl, ruled by a line that goes back seven hundred years. That takes a couple of paragraphs, and is interwoven with plot developments; despite a reputation for elaborate prose (“iridescent, crystalline, singing,” according to H.P. Lovecraft), Dunsany could really be quite concise.

   But, in a moment worthy of Dunsany’s American contemporary, James Branch Cabell, at his most mordant, we meet these stolid people as the Parliament of Erl, taking the initiative for the first time in five centuries, asks that the land be ruled by “a magic lord.” And so the current lord, feeling unable to refuse so “reasonable” a request, made after so long an interval, commissions his apparently matter-of-fact son, Alveric, to meet the demand by marrying a princess of Elfland. How to arrange it is Alveric’s problem.

   And if, indeed, Cabell had been writing the tale, everything after these first two (!) pages would have been about the absurdities of democracy, aristocracy, celebrity, marriage, and anything else that came into sight; a version of “Jurgen” (1919) or “Figures of Earth” (1921). For sources, one would look back with certainty to the quest of an Elf-queen in Chaucer-the-pilgrim’s comically inept “Tale of Sir Thopas” in “The Canterbury Tales.”

   But instead of Cabell’s satire, or Chaucer’s, we then get charming word-pictures of the obviously British countryside (England and Ireland both seem to be drawn upon), vignettes of children, and of trolls, and the sensations of dogs — this being in fact unmistakably the work of the Anglo-Irish Lord Dunsany, travel-writer, essayist, and master of the very short story.

   As Alveric tries to cross the forever-shifting borders of Elfland, seeking the Elfin Mountains across the edges of the fields we know, the author might have been anticipating Hope Mirrlees’ “Lud-in-the-Mist,” still two years from publication. But the nature of the traffic between Erl and Elfland is rather different than that between Mirrlees’ Free State of Dorimare and the Elfin Marches, and looking forward seems no more helpful than looking back.

   And, eventually, we come to an extraordinarily detailed account of hunting a unicorn with dogs, using strictly medieval methods — for stags, not unicorns. Dunsany was an enthusiastic hunter himself, and, to judge from John Cummins’ “The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting” (1988), he knew how deer were pursued and taken “par force” by his Anglo-Norman ancestors. It is rather grimly realistic. If you can’t tolerate the sort of predator-kills-its-prey scene from which the cameras always pan back on wildlife shows, you may have a problem here. It is an extraordinary accomplishment, although it was years before I realized quite how good, as well as how exciting, it was. (Explanations of the hunting scenes in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” were the first to prove helpful; Turgenyev and Tolstoy provided parallels, but were too nineteenth-century, as well as Russian, to be secure guides.)

   Note to (some) Robert. E. Howard fans: You don’t need a well-muscled warrior laying waste to whole armies to have action scenes!

   So it should be no surprise that it doesn’t seem to fit any established categories. “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” is “of its own kind,” *sui generis,* to be enjoyed — or not enjoyed — on its own merits. If not as unique as the Phoenix, it still stands alone, hard to judge from any amount of experience. It is perhaps more easily absorbed by the practiced reader, who recognizes the unexpected as unusual, or even by the totally inexperienced, than by the relative novice looking for genre-based cues in a book that preceded their invention, by a writer who, if he had known the conventions, probably would have ignored them whenever he wanted to.

   The 1920s seem to have been a good time for publishing fantasy, but it didn’t last. Faced with the then established publishers’ and retailers’ belief — or, given some actual sales figures, the superstition — that “fantasy doesn’t sell,” it is not surprising that, like much of Dunsany’s production, this book faded from store shelves and the publisher’s list, and then from memory, known only to those fortunate enough to lay hands on a copy. Dunsany himself was hardly forgotten, of course — he continued to publish, almost until his death in 1957. He left an impact on many writers in the first half of the century, some very different from others. H.P. Lovecraft, of course, but also Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp (and not just when they turned Mr. Jorkens’ club into Gavagan’s Bar); and Fritz Leiber, who would have been particularly interested in Dunsany the playwright. And he would do so again; but it would take awhile.

   Then Bob Pepper presented the unicorn hunt as dark stained-glass for the front side of the wraparound cover of the June 1969 Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, catching much of the action without the blood. (The series logo, by the way, was “The Unicorn’s Head”!) That mass-market paperback of “The King of Elfland’s Daughter,” with a typically enthusiastic, but not terribly informative, introduction by Lin Carter, presented the book to a whole new set of readers (myself among them). Many of us wondered where it had been all our lives. Out of print for forty years! Another demonstration that the physically inaccessible will be obscure, without regard to any real merits.

   It was reprinted in that format in 1973, and had a third printing, without the introduction, and with a new cover by Darrell Sweet, as a Ballantine Fantasy in January 1977. (It was part of the transition, completed in March, to the Del Rey imprint, Ballantine Books having been acquired by Random House; so no “Adult” in the label, and the new “Basilisk’s Crest” insignia appeared in place of any of the versions of the “Unicorn’s Head.”) This seems to have been the last American-based edition for about twenty years, although there was at least one British-based trade-paperback edition, in 1982. (I say “based” because there seems to have been international distribution of both.)

   The Ballantine mass-market edition, with the substitution / addition of a new introduction, was eventually the basis of the “Del Rey Impact” trade paperback of 1999 (and its “library binding” counterpart), and this of the “Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks” edition (UK) in 2001, both with an introduction by Neil Gaiman, and cover art from John William Waterhouse’s vaguely relevant “La Belle Dane Sans Merci” of 1893 (illustrating the Keats poem, in the Pre-Raphaelite mode). The Gollancz edition differs visibly in the absence of the bands at the top and bottom of the cover.

   These forms of the text, at 242 pages besides varying front matter, seem distinct from the 282-page Unwin Paperbacks trade edition, with a cover by Kathy Wyatt, published in 1982. Although I have not noticed any textual differences, it may, being re-set, go back independently to the original G.P. Putnam printing (301 pages); or to a reported 1972 British edition (Tom Stacey, London), which I have not seen.

   Not a lot of editions and printings, but the book has been kept alive, despite some gaps in availability. And, given the corrupt (or, frankly, butchered) condition of some fantasy and science fiction classics, we may have in this case a happy state of relative reliability of all the available forms.

   
3. 

   Anonymous @ 2:15 pm

   Lord Dunsany is acknowledged by many, including leading authors (from W.B. Yeats and Lovecraft to top writers of today) as one of the greatest contributors to the field of modern fantasy. Sadly, many of his works have been allowed by publishers to slip out of print and many readers today have never had the chance… This book is one of his best and anyone who enjoys fantastic fiction, myth or legend should try it. The story has such power, is written so lyrically, is woven so richly, that there can be few comparisons. You care about the people, you can see the realms before you. There is depth and complexity, joy and heartbreak, detail and sweeping vision, and a leavening of humour (some supplied by the people of the land but especially by the troll… and no, this is not some stereotypical “bad guy on a bridge”). For style and reach, few can touch Dunsany. Don’t miss out – and when you’ve read this book, try “The Charwoman’s Shadow”, also reprinted. For something different, there’s a whole alternate mythology in “The Complete Pegana” and some truly outstanding short stories in “The Hashish Man” – and keep an eye out for any other Dunsany works. Maybe even write or e-mail a publisher or two to look for more…

   
4. 

   david @ 2:44 pm

   Arguably, the beginning of the end for fantastic writing came was the complex and detailed history of Middle Earth in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings; suddenly, books became encyclopediae with stories and any sort of imagination became redundant. This is an accusation that could never be levelled at The King of Elfland’s Daughter. This beautiful, evocative book, written before the introduction of the sword-and-accountancy template, improvises its reality to produce something with more resemblance to Lewis Carrol than Tolkein. The feel is almost psychedelic, but the gently ornate prose glows with the sort of tender magic that would be entirely lost by wilder fantasies to follow. The story itself deals with the desire of the men of Erl to have a magic lord rule them, and progresses through thunderbolts picked up in cabbage patches and unicorn hunts, in and out of the fields we know, to the final enchantment, and a mesmerisingly gentle conclusion. Some readers find the underdeveloped characters and the slow moving story frustrating, but this is probably a symptom of the modern approach to fantasy; rather than define a background and then tell a heavily developed story within it, Dunsany moves the setting to the foreground, using the story almost as a device to reveal his beautifully imagined vision. In my view, this book is truly the essence of imaginative writing: it’s genuinely creative rather than following a template and, rather than numb the reader with facts and details, uses broad brush strokes, allowing the mind to expand into the gaps. It is a true classic of the genre, and I would recommend it to anyone jaded by the mundane visions of modern fantasy.

   
5. 

   R. M. Fisher @ 4:15 pm

   After reading mostly positive reviews on this webpage concerning Lord Dunsany’s novel I went in search of it, and found it at my university library. Reading it was quite a different experience for me, but people who aren’t prepared for the style of writing like I was might be disappointed, confused or scorning of the slow, dream-like pace, archetype characters and poetical language. This might be especially true of fans of typical ‘fantasy’ genre books (authors such as David Eddings or Terry Brooks) where a fantasy universe is deemed to be good only if it has a solid backing and an exhaustive array of facts and figures to add realism to the stories. Lord Dusany however, expects the reader to take for granted the existence of Elfland, trolls, elves and will o’ the wisps, without trying to explain them. ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’ is refreshingly free of geographies, biologies, cultures, or other infinite details that are so prevailent in other fantasy cult books.

   The story goes that the Parliament of Erl approaches their king, eager for their small country to be known throughout the lands. The solution is for it to somehow imbue magic into its royalty, and to achieve this the king sends his son Alveric into Elfland to make the King of Elfland’s daughter his wife. Alveric is successful in this, and brings the beautiful Lirazel back to Erl, where they have a child Orien. The King of Elfland however desparatly wants his daughter returned to him, and by use of three powerful runes, contrives to bring her back to her home.

   Dunsany delves into several themes throughout the book, all framed by the contrasts of Erl and Elfland. Within this, he explores the differences between Paganism and Christianity, freedom and restrictions, the passage of times, mortality and immortality, male and female, parent and child – the list goes on. Running through these is the main story thread that makes clear that everyone desires what they cannot have, and although by the end of the novel their desires come to furfillment, it is in an ironic resolution that no one (including this reviewer) could have ever wished for. The ending is thus happy, but contains a certain sense of something bittersweet, like a lost childhood that Dusany continually likens Elfland to.

   It was acknowledged by many later fantasy writers that they were inspired by Dunsany, including (obviously) Tolkien. It is no coincidence that Alveric and Lirazel have a certain resemblance to Aragorn and Arwen in way of their courtly love and somewhat ‘forbidden’ romance. However, I feel that Dunsany hits upon notes of inevitable dischord between the two that Tolkien neglects. I wonder for example if Arwen ever felt: ‘the years that assail beauty, and the harshness that vex the spirit that were already about her, and the doom of all mortals hung over her head.’ It is something for devoted Tolkien fans to think about, as well as potent storytelling. (That wasn’t a dig at Tolkien by any means, just a thought to dwell on).

   On the actual styles of storytelling, many people might feel frustrated at the continued use of ‘the fields we know’ to describe earth, and faery as a place ‘only told of in song’. However, as I went through the story, I found the repetition to become quite familiar and comfiting, like a steady rhythm or heartbeat, and the final sentence making use of this repeated phrase made me take a deep sigh of contentment. Lord Dunsany’s other gift is his use of metaphor and imagery. For instance, his use of the priest likening Lirazel to a mermaid, and then later echoing this thought with ‘there was something in [the priest's] voice as he spoke, a little distant from her, and [Lirazel] knew that he spoke as one that walked safe upon the shore, calling far to a mermaid in a dangerous sea,’ makes this not a book, but literature. Dunsany’s soft, poetical, vivid, mellow language is what makes this book so appealing, and used to unforgetable descriptions of Elfland, twilight, the countryside, and beauty in all its forms.

   A couple of times he faulters when he slips into what I’ve described above – trying to make story *real*. References to Tennyson and the infamous unicorn horn of Rome are jarring, and pull one out of the dreamy atmosphere. The archetypes are expected and unsurprising – the mighty king of Elfland, the elusive witch-upon-the-hill, the elfin beauty, the warrior-king, the hunter-prince, the trickster fey – we’ve encounted them countless times in one form or another.

   But overall, this book has my recommendation, for a novelty to see how the fantasy-writers wrote before Tolkien, and for a wonderful escape into a glorious world. Plus, you can learn some little bits of trivia that you may of not known before, for instance – did you know that faeries hate dogs? That they cause clocks to stop? That their infants can talk?