BOOK DETAILS
Trade paper ISBN-13: 978-1941147399 List Price: $17.99 U.S. Pages: 198 Published: 2014 |
The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933)
Lord Dunsany With a new introduction by Mark Valentine Due to copyright restrictions, this title is only available to customers in the U.S. and Canada.
Orders from addresses outside of the U.S. and Canada will be cancelled and refunded. Credit card processing fees of 5% are non-refundable on all cancellations. Any questions, please ask *before* ordering. Book Description
After his father’s interference in Irish politics ends with a band of killers arriving on Christmas night to assassinate him, young Charles Peridore finds himself master of the estate. During idyllic school holidays, Charles enjoys riding to hounds and hunting geese and snipe while his friend Tommy Marlin tells stories of Tir-nan-Og, the land of eternal youth that lies just beyond the bog. But when Progress arrives in the form of an English corporation determined to convert the landscape into factories and housing, it appears that an entire way of life is destined to vanish. Only one thing stands in the way: the sorcery of an old witch, whose curses the English workers do not even believe in. In the novel’s unforgettable conclusion, the ancient powers of the wise woman will be pitted against the machinery of modern corporate greed, with surprising and thrilling results. Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) is one of the most influential fantasy authors of the 20th century, counting H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman among his many admirers. Regarded by many as his finest novel, The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933), a rich blend of fantasy, nostalgia and autobiography, returns to print for the first time in decades in this edition, which features a new introduction by Mark Valentine. |
reviews
“Inventor of a new mythology and weaver of surprising folklore, Lord Dunsany stands dedicated to a strange world of fantastic beauty . . . unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous and languorous world of incandescently exotic vision. No amount of mere description can convey more than a fraction of Lord Dunsany’s pervasive charm.” – H.P. Lovecraft
“There is a seam of memorable beauty running through the whole story.” – Seamus Heaney, The Listener
“This story shows Lord Dunsany at his best. His imagination, and his mellifluous prose, are to be found in it; but more than most of his books it keeps its feet upon earth . . . it has the singular, melancholy charm of something solid and yet hazy, like the woods in autumn.” – Saturday Review
“[N]o reader will forget the final wild scene . . . There is a strangeness and beauty and sorrow here, and all within a small and unobtrusive frame.” – Bookman
“There is a seam of memorable beauty running through the whole story.” – Seamus Heaney, The Listener
“This story shows Lord Dunsany at his best. His imagination, and his mellifluous prose, are to be found in it; but more than most of his books it keeps its feet upon earth . . . it has the singular, melancholy charm of something solid and yet hazy, like the woods in autumn.” – Saturday Review
“[N]o reader will forget the final wild scene . . . There is a strangeness and beauty and sorrow here, and all within a small and unobtrusive frame.” – Bookman
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany, was born in 1878 to a wealthy family whose title is the second oldest in the Irish peerage, dating to 1439. Growing up, he split time between London and the family properties in Shoreham, Kent and Dunsany Castle in County Meath and was educated at Cheam, Eton, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, which he entered in 1896.
Dunsany was an extremely prolific writer, producing a body of work comprising some eighty volumes in various forms, including short stories, plays, poems, novels, nonfiction, and autobiography. His earliest published works were poems contributed to periodicals in the 1890s, and by 1905 his first volume of short stories, The Gods of Pegana, appeared. In this volume and in several more collections of stories and plays published over the next few years, Dunsany wrote within the fantasy genre, many of his tales focusing on an invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegana. These early stories have been cited as influences on J.R.R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula Le Guin, and others.
Dunsany’s first novel, Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley, appeared in 1922 and was followed by two more well-regarded fantasy novels, both considered classics of the genre, The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924) and The Charwoman’s Shadow (1926). Among his later books, notable highlights include The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933), a semi-autobiographical mixture of realism and fantasy set in late-nineteenth-century Ireland, My Talks with Dean Spanley (1936), adapted for a critically acclaimed 2008 film, and the Jorkens books, collections of short stories in which Joseph Jorkens, a middle-aged raconteur, would recount fantastic stories to anyone who bought him a whiskey and soda.
Dunsany’s wide-ranging interests included hunting, shooting, chess, and cricket, and, despite his love of hunting, he was an advocate for animal rights. He was also involved in Irish literary circles and numbered Lady Gregory, George William “Æ” Russell, Oliver St John Gogarty, and W. B. Yeats among his friends. His other contributions to Irish literary life included major donations to the Abbey Theatre and championing the work of the poet Francis Ledwidge.
Later in life, Dunsany transferred Dunsany Castle to his son and heir and settled with his wife, Beatrice, in Shoreham, Kent, where he continued to write and publish until his death in 1957 from an acute attack of appendicitis.
Both popular and critically well regarded during his lifetime, Dunsany’s stature has continued to grow after his death, with most of his works still in print and his importance to the fantasy genre increasingly recognized, with Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro, Jorge Luis Borges, Michael Moorcock, and many others, citing him as an influence.
Dunsany was an extremely prolific writer, producing a body of work comprising some eighty volumes in various forms, including short stories, plays, poems, novels, nonfiction, and autobiography. His earliest published works were poems contributed to periodicals in the 1890s, and by 1905 his first volume of short stories, The Gods of Pegana, appeared. In this volume and in several more collections of stories and plays published over the next few years, Dunsany wrote within the fantasy genre, many of his tales focusing on an invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegana. These early stories have been cited as influences on J.R.R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula Le Guin, and others.
Dunsany’s first novel, Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley, appeared in 1922 and was followed by two more well-regarded fantasy novels, both considered classics of the genre, The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924) and The Charwoman’s Shadow (1926). Among his later books, notable highlights include The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933), a semi-autobiographical mixture of realism and fantasy set in late-nineteenth-century Ireland, My Talks with Dean Spanley (1936), adapted for a critically acclaimed 2008 film, and the Jorkens books, collections of short stories in which Joseph Jorkens, a middle-aged raconteur, would recount fantastic stories to anyone who bought him a whiskey and soda.
Dunsany’s wide-ranging interests included hunting, shooting, chess, and cricket, and, despite his love of hunting, he was an advocate for animal rights. He was also involved in Irish literary circles and numbered Lady Gregory, George William “Æ” Russell, Oliver St John Gogarty, and W. B. Yeats among his friends. His other contributions to Irish literary life included major donations to the Abbey Theatre and championing the work of the poet Francis Ledwidge.
Later in life, Dunsany transferred Dunsany Castle to his son and heir and settled with his wife, Beatrice, in Shoreham, Kent, where he continued to write and publish until his death in 1957 from an acute attack of appendicitis.
Both popular and critically well regarded during his lifetime, Dunsany’s stature has continued to grow after his death, with most of his works still in print and his importance to the fantasy genre increasingly recognized, with Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro, Jorge Luis Borges, Michael Moorcock, and many others, citing him as an influence.