[Ballantine Adult Fantasy 65] • Over The Hill & Far Away

An excellent collection

Certainly, of all the weavers of beautiful magic, there is none like Dunsany. And perhaps his magic is so powerful because he himself believed in basing his stories in the roots of reality. Of writing he said:

 

“It is my belief that those sudden visionary pictures which are the true essence of any art arise like a flower from a seed that has fallen into the mind, sometimes in infancy, sometimes in later childhood, sometimes in adult years, but often as imperceptibly as any seed blown on the wind finds a home for itself in the earth at the end of its wandering. Bricks without straw are more easily made than imagination without memories.”

 

 

Dunsany’s life was extraordinarily rich in experience—he was globetrotter, sportsman, poet, peer, lecturer, playwright and much more. However, although he set the matrix for many a following writer of adult fantasy, the richness and individuality of his writing came from a special talent that has never been equalled or duplicated.