The Book of Wonder & The Last Book of Wonder

by Lord Dunsany, S.H. Sime (Illustrator), Cecilia Dart-Thornton (Introduction)

THE BOOK OF WONDER AND THE LAST BOOK OF WONDER – A BOOK THAT INSPIRED TOLKIEN. With original illustrations. THE PROFESSOR’S BOOKSHELF #8. Lord Dunsany wrote more than eighty books during his career in the early 20th Century. Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, enjoyed reading Dunsany’s works - a fact which he acknowledged numerous times in his letters. Tolkien was twenty years old in 1912, when ‘The Book of Wonder’, illustrated by Sidney Sime, first appeared in British bookshops and libraries. The short stories in this book are Gothic in style, poetic, mysterious and dream-like - often nightmarish, horrific and almost hallucinatory. Numerous accoutrements of fantasy are found within the realms of ‘The Book of Wonder and The Last Book of Wonder’, as they are in Middle-earth; talismans, precious metals, jewels, signalling horns, dark, dangerous woods infested with evil spiders and more. A red, glowing, all-seeing eye opens above Dunsany’s frightening fantasyland, just as the Eye of Sauron glares across Middle Earth. This edition is ornamented with the original pictures printed in the 1912 edition - sixteen intricate illustrations and numerous ornate initial capitals by renowned fantasy artist Sidney Sime. Dart-Thornton’s introduction discusses intriguing links between Dunsany’s and Tolkien’s works, noting also that in an unusual twist, Dunsany used to write his stories based on Sime’s illustrations, rather than the other way around. Dale J Nelson, in ‘Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien's Fantasy’, concludes, ‘Tolkien’s letters and other sources for his life do not say very much about his recreational reading, but given his lifelong interest in literary fantasy and the parallels adduced above, one seems to be justified in suspecting that Tolkien was indebted to … Dunsany.’

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

298 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2013

About the author

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.

Reviews

[Andrew Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great holiday read and this edition offers the text along with the Sidney Sime illustrations which very much help visualize and enhance the world Dunsany is creating. Dunsany is a true master of the art of fantasy and world-building in short sharp impactful tales of wonder - great to revisit some of these stories and experience ones i had not encountered before - esp ‘The Loot of Loma’ and ‘The City on Mallington Moor’ - Highly recommend

[Sebastian Du Pont · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that the stories contained within are all very enjoyable and its nice to see someone actually produce a version of The Book of Wonders in which those essential illustrations on which the texts are based are maintained.

Having said that: There are so many mistakes in the text (random symbols, M and In being switched around, sudden 1 letter drops in fully capitalized text, tec.) that either indicate that an AI must have produced the text by scanning a handwritten manuscript or that around the time of this books production there must have been a mass shooting at the local editor's union for I can hardly imagine a paid professional submitting this with a honest face.