The Book of Wonder

For this 1912 collection, Lord Dunsany worked backward from pictures to prose, writing fourteen tales to match illustrations that Sidney Sime had drawn first. The stories wander through his invented geography of far cities and stranger frontiers, following jewel thieves and idolaters, doomed adventurers, and the gnoles whose house no burglar should enter. Each tale is brief, wry, and edged with a sense that wonder and disaster travel together. Dunsany’s cool, ironic voice and his gift for naming places and gods made these fables a lasting influence on later fantasy writers, with Lovecraft and Tolkien among the readers who admired him. The complete collection is available to download free as a PDF and EPUB edition.