The King of Elfland's Daughter

By Lord Dunsany and Paul Di Filippo

From “one of the greatest writers of this century,” a fantasy masterpiece about the aftermath of a marriage between a mortal prince and an elfin princess. —Arthur C. Clarke
 
Before the fellowships and wardrobes and dire wolves . . .
 
 . . . there was the village of Erl and the Kingdom of Elfland.
 
Considered formative to the development of the fairy tale and high fantasy subgenres, The King of Elfland's Daughter follows Alveric, who leaves home on a quest with a few basic instructions: locate the Princess Lirazel in Elfland, convince her to return to Erl and marry him, and together produce the first magical Lord of Erl.
 
But what happens when a village gets exactly what it asked for?
 
How does an elf learn to live as a human?
 
Is love lost once, lost forever?
 
The people of Erl are about to find out.
 
Take a walk through the fields we know and see if you can spot the pale-blue peaks of the Elfland Mountains. Fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Neil Gaiman will adore Lord Dunsany’s influential 1924 classic as much as those authors themselves did.
 
“No amount of mere description can convey more than a fraction of Lord Dunsany's pervasive charm.” —H. P. Lovecraft
 
“We find that he has but tranfigured with beauty the common sights of the world.” —William Butler Yeats
 
“No one can understand modern fantasy without understanding its roots, and Lord Dunsany's work is immediately significant as well as enjoyable even today.” —Katharine Kerr
 
“A fantasy novel in a class with the Tolkien books.”—L. Sprague de Camp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781680573756

Lord Dunsany

Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) was a British writer. Born in London, Dunsany—whose name was Edward Plunkett—was raised in a prominent Anglo-Irish family alongside a younger brother. When his father died in 1899, he received the title of Lord Dunsany and moved to Dunsany Castle in 1901. He met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers two years later, and they married in 1904. They were central figures in the social spheres of Dublin and London, donating generously to the Abbey Theatre while forging friendships with W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and George William Russell. In 1905, he published The Gods of Pegāna, a collection of fantasy stories, launching his career as a leading figure in the Irish Literary Revival. Subsequent collections, such as A Dreamer’s Tales (1910) and The Book of Wonder (1912), would influence generations of writers, including J. R. R. Tolkein, Ursula K. Le Guin, and H. P. Lovecraft. In addition to his pioneering work in the fantasy and science fiction genres, Dunsany was a successful dramatist and poet. His works have been staged and adapted for theatre, radio, television, and cinema, and he was unsuccessfully nominated for the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Book preview

The King of Elfland’s Daughter

Praise for Lord Dunsany

A fine, strange, almost forgotten novel … the writing is beautiful … This is the real thing. It’s a rich red wine, which may come as a shock if all one has had so far has been cola. So trust the book. Trust the poetry and the strangeness, and the magic of the ink, and drink it slowly.

NEIL GAIMAN, HUGO, NEBULA, AND NEWBERY WINNER AND AUTHOR OF AMERICAN GODS, STARDUST, AND THE SANDMAN

Dunsany mined a narrow vein, but it was all pure ore, and all his own.

URSULA K. LE GUIN, WINNER OF THE HUGO AND NEBULA AWARDS AND AUTHOR OF THE EARTHSEA CYCLE AND THE HAINISH CYCLE

One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

SIR ARTHUR C. CLARK, HUGO AND NEBULA AWARD WINNER AND AUTHOR OF 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY AND THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE

A fantasy novel in a class with the Tolkien books.

L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP, WINNER OF THE HUGO AND WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AND AUTHOR OF THE PUSADIAN SERIES AND THE NOVARIAN SERIES

The King of Elfland’s Daughter

LORD DUNSANY

Edited by

MANDY HOLLEY

Foreword by

PAUL DI FILIPPO

WordFire Press

The King Of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany

Originally published in 1924. This work is in the public domain.

This new edition edited by Mandy Holley

Foreword copyright © 2022 by Paul Di Filippo

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

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The ebook edition of this book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share the ebook edition with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

EBook ISBN: 978-1-68057-375-6

Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-68057-374-9

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-68057-376-3

Cover design by Mandy Holley and Allyson Longueira

Cover artwork image by Belus | Adobe Stock

Published by WordFire Press, LLC

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Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

WordFire Press Edition 2022

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Contents

Foreword

Paul Di Filippo

Preface

The Plan of the Parliament of Erl

Alveric Comes in Sight of the Elfin Mountains

The Magical Sword Meets Some of the Swords of Elfland

Alveric Comes Back to Earth After Many Years

The Wisdom of the Parliament of Erl

The Rune of the Elf King

The Coming of the Troll

The Arrival of the Rune

Lirazel Blows Away

The Ebbing of Elfland

The Deep of the Woods

The Unenchanted Plain

The Reticence of the Leather-Worker

The Quest for the Elfin Mountains

The Retreat of the Elf King

Orion Hunts the Stag

The Unicorn Comes in the Starlight

The Grey Tent in the Evening

Twelve Old Men Without Magic

A Historical Fact

On the Verge of Earth

Orion Appoints a Whip

Lurulu Watches the Restlessness of Earth

Lurulu Speaks of Earth and the Ways of Men

Lirazel Remembers the Fields We Know

The Horn of Alveric

The Return of Lurulu

A Chapter on Unicorn-Hunting

The Luring of the People of the Marshes

The Coming of Too Much Magic

The Cursing of Elfin Things

Lirazel Yearns for Earth

The Shining Line

The Last Great Rune

Publisher’s Note

About the Author

About the Editor

WordFire Classics

Foreword

PAUL DI FILIPPO

That Shimmering Line of Silver…The Gleaming Line Comes On

In the pages of The Times Dispatch from Richmond, Virginia, for the issue of November 23, 1924, we encounter a review by the improbably and seemingly contrivedly monikered Hunter Stagg. (In reality, Hunter Stagg was a well known book person who lived from 1895 to 1960, and came by his given and family names in the usual unassuming manner.) The item under Stagg’s critical lens is the newest book from Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland’s Daughter (KOED, if you will). Stagg places it firmly in the then-current Gaelic Revival school populated by William Butler Yeats, James Stephens and others—a not incorrect, albeit incomplete assessment. Although Stagg admires the book’s rhythm and cadence, its limpid prose and beautiful style, he finds it bereft of intellectual content, too long, and lacking in sufficient dramatic action. He also charges Dunsany with failing to distinguish between phantasy and whimsy.

It is easy to see, at nearly a century’s remove, that posterity has left Stagg’s authentic, learned, but blinkered opinions on the dustheap of history, while validating and enshrining Dunsany’s novel as a fantasy classic. Far from being guilty of Stagg’s charges, the book is just long enough, rich with startling and original otherworldly conceits and imagery, and a fine blend of naturalism and phantasy. As for intellectual content, Dunsany never intended to mimic Shaw or Wells. KOED is primarily a novel of emotions, spirituality, numinous longings and romantic aspirations—matters of the heart and soul and anima, not matters of the head. But even in the latter category, the novel is not entirely lacking, since it gives us some useful insights into matters of governing.

Stagg’s misprisions, his deficit in understanding, was probably not entirely his fault, for he was generally a fair and educated judge. But Dunsany was pioneering virgin territory, as he had been doing since the start of his career, all in the service of establishing the parameters of the modern fantasy novel, a mode for which readers did not necessarily yet have the proper reading protocols. If today we see Dunsany’s achievements more clearly, it is only because we have been well trained by the thousands of books that have followed the paths charted by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (1878-1957), paths which extend deep beyond the fields we know and which have been latterly trodden by his heirs and students and lineage extenders. As critic John Clute, in his Encyclopedia of Fantasy, opines: [Dunsany] was instrumental in creating the essential autonomous venues within which modern Fantasy could be told. Not only does any tale which Crosshatches between this world and Faerie (or any self-contained Otherworld) owe a Founder’s Debt to LD, but the Secondary World created by J R R Tolkien—from which almost all Fantasylands have devolved—also took shape and flavour from LD’s example.

From his very first book, The Gods of Pegāna, appearing in 1905, when the author was only twenty-seven years old, a collection of near-prose poems which had the unanticipated temerity to create a whole pantheon and its myths, Dunsany seemed intent on rethinking and reinvigorating the Victorian fantasy tradition that had been exemplified by such early masters as William Morris, George MacDonald, and Andrew Lang. Although decades older than Lost Generation writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Dunsany at times seems to have shared their impulse to rethink all the old shibboleths that had been invalidated by World War I and allied technological and cultural trends. Like James Branch Cabell, born just one year after Dunsany, our author infuses, albeit very subtly, a certain Jazz Age sensibility into his works of this period. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Dunsany’s novel occupying the pocket of a trendy flapper’s raccoon coat, or lying on an Art Deco coffee table along with issues of The Smart Set and Black Mask. Reading the Dunsany books of this period (he continued writing very capably almost up till his death) always conjures up for me a contemporaneous visual style, associated with such artists as Sidney Sime (who did indeed illustrate many Dunsany stories), Kay Nielsen, and Maxfield Parrish.

Nonetheless, like all great fantasy, the book has its eternal aspect as well. KOED’s story—simultaneously cast as a Renaissance fable (allusion to these events as taking place in the 1500s occurs in the twentieth chapter titled A Historical Fact), and also as a modern parable—harks to essential and unchanging verities of the human condition.

We open in the small village of Erl, currently governed by an aging king. The town’s roster of influential advisory citizens, like a bevy of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt types (the novel of that name, we note, was 1922), want their town to stand out, become famous, and attract tourists and trade. If only we had some magic, they reason, that would do the trick! And so the king obligingly dispatches his only child, Alveric, to cross the borders of Elfland and wed Lirazel, the King of Elfland’s daughter. Alveric secures a magic sword from the witch Ziroonderel and sets out. He achieves his quest, and returns with his otherwordly bride. To the pair is born a son, Orion, whose upbringng is entrusted later to the witch Ziroonderel. When Lirazel finally heeds a numinous summons to return to her native realm, Alveric is left a romantically distraught widow, a bereft seeker wandering the fields we know in search of reentry to Elfland. Years pass, and Orion is now a young lad, a mighty hunter whose favored prey is unicorns unwisely straying from Elfland. Eventually securing from that same fabulous country a pack of troll helpers led by one Lurulu, Orion too begins to dream of reuniting with his mother. But Lirazel is fully under the sway of her imperious father, who withdraws the borders of Elfland forever away. Meanwhile, the parliament of Erl find that the desired magical attractions for their town have become a bit much. Finally the day comes when the King relents, and moves magically to encompass Erl within Elfland’s borders, granting both mortals and fey their hearts’ desires, for reunion and transcendence.

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They saw it too, a shimmering line of silver, or a little blue like steel, flickering and changing with the reflection of strange passing colours. And before it, very faint like threatening breezes breathing before a storm, came the soft sound of very old songs. It caught, as they all stood gazing, one of Vand’s furthest sheep; and instantly its fleece was that pure gold that is told of in old romance; and the shining line came on and the sheep disappeared altogether. They saw now that it was about the height of the mist from a small stream; and still Vand stood gazing at it, neither moving nor thinking. But Niv turned very soon and beckoned curtly to Zend and seized Alveric by the arm and hastened away towards Erl. The gleaming line, that seemed to bump and stumble over every unevenness of the rough fields, came not so fast as they hastened; yet it never stopped when they rested, never wearied when they were tired, but came on over all the hills and hedges of Earth; nor did sunset change its appearance or check its pace.

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My very condensed summary of KOED’s plot ignores a wealth of glorious and mundane incidents—more than enough material to satisify anyone except Hunter Stagg—everything from Orion’s unique education to his mature hunting forays; from Alveric’s long wanderings with demented companions to Lurulu’s fascination with the world of humans; from the consternation of the troll-beleaguered townspeople to the carefully cultivated nescience of the citizens who dwell close to the borderland of faerie. And all of the telling is couched in the resplendent yet humble, gloriously soaring yet earth-anchored prose of Dunsany. The temptation to quote passages at length is strong. I will indulge just once more.

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As the trolls scurried earthwards to laugh at the ways of man, Lirazel stirred where she sat on her father’s knee, who grave and calm on his throne of mist and ice had hardly moved for twelve of our earthly years. She sighed and the sigh rippled over the fells of dream and lightly troubled Elfland. And the dawns and the sunsets and twilight and the pale blue glow of stars, that are blended together forever to be the light of Elfland, felt a faint touch of sorrow and all their radiance shook. For the magic that caught these lights and the spells that bound them together, to illumine forever the land that owes no allegiance to Time, were not so strong as a sorrow rising dark from a royal mood of a princess of the elvish line. She sighed, for through her long content and across the calm of Elfland there had floated a thought of Earth; so that in the midmost splendours of Elfland, of which song can barely tell, she called to mind common cowslips, and many a trivial weed of the fields we know. And walking in those fields she saw in fancy Orion, upon the other side of the boundary of twilight, remote from her by she knew not what waste of years. And the magical glories of Elfland and its beauty beyond our dreaming, and the deep deep calm in which ages slept, unhurt unhurried by time, and the art of her father that guarded the least of the lilies from fading, and the spells by which he made day-dreams and yearnings true, held her fancy no longer from roving nor contented her any more. And so her sigh blew over the magical land and slightly troubled the flowers.

Dunsany’s great theme, embodied across several characters, is the unfathomable innate longing among all creatures of higher consciousness, mortal, troll and elf alike, for some glimpse of a world or plane of existence where the heart can be untroubled and at peace, and where an individual may feel free of care and at ease, in harmony with the universe. The phrase the fields we know—present from the actual Preface onwards, cropping up frequently throughout the book—stands in contrast to this high place (to use Cabell’s coinage for such a nirvana). And yet, like a good Zen teacher, Dunsany’s ultimate secret is that samsara—the fields we know, full of discomfort and longing—can become identical with nirvana. The two are not really separate or antithetical after all, given the right vision or mindset. This lesson is conveyed to us by the literal merger of the two realms at book’s end.

This conception and weltanschauung has been the engine of much great fantasy subsequent to KOED, from the work of Jack Vance (note his appropriation of the name Lurulu for the title of his final novel) to Peter Beagle to Karin Tidbeck (her recent novel The Memory Theater is very Dunsanyesque), but finds its grandest expression in John Crowley’s Little, Big, which might almost be seen as a secret sequel to KOED, when we focus our attentions on the book’s resonant portrayal of the fey, its bittersweet melancholy tone, and its concentration on father-son dynamics, as well as its many allied stylistic and narrative riffs.

Indeed, Dunsany’s invisible hand continues to bestow its ghostly blessing across the whole field of fantasy.

Today the castle-centric, 1600-acre estate where Lord Dunsany once dwelled remains in the family’s hands. The current lord of the manse and holder of that esteemed title is not a writer, however, but a youngish fellow named Randall Plunkett, a 38-year-old, who was once a steak-eating bodybuilding death metal fan with no interest in land, [but who] is now vegan and on an environmental mission. Plunkett is intent on reverting his lands to their pristine, wild conditions, to encourage a diversity of flora and fauna beyond that of the typical manicured fields we know. In some sense this scion of his famous ancestor seems intent on turning his estate into, well, Elfland.

The human—or elvish—heart appears to want the same things throughout all eternity. It was Lord Dunsany’s gift to be able to couch that realization in beautiful and affecting tales.

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NOTE

‘People think you’re an idiot’: death metal Irish baron rewilds his estate:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/07/people-think-youre-an-idiot-death-metal-irish-baron-rewilds-his-estate

Preface

Ihope that no suggestion of any strange land that may be conveyed by the title will scare readers away from this book; for, though some chapters do indeed tell of Elfland, in the greater part of them there is no more to be shown than the face of the fields we know, and ordinary English woods and a common village and valley, a good twenty or twenty-five miles from the border of Elfland.

—Lord Dunsany

To Lady Dunsany

The Plan of the Parliament of Erl

In their ruddy jackets of leather that reached to their knees the men of Erl appeared before their lord, the stately white-haired man in his long red room. He leaned in his carven chair and heard their spokesman.

And thus their spokesman said:

For seven hundred years the chiefs of your race have ruled us well; and their deeds are remembered by the minor minstrels, living on yet in their little tinkling songs. And yet the generations stream away, and there is no new thing.

What would you? Said the lord.

We would be ruled by a magic lord, they said.

So be it, said the lord. It is five hundred years since my people have spoken thus in parliament, and it shall always be as your parliament saith. You have spoken. So be it.

And he raised his hand and blessed them and they went.

They went back to their ancient crafts, to the fitting of iron to the hooves of horses, to working upon leather, to tending flowers, to ministering to the rugged needs of Earth; they followed the ancient ways, and looked for a new thing. But the old lord sent a word to his eldest son, bidding him come before him.

And very soon the young man stood before him, in that same carven chair from which he had not moved, where light, growing late, from high windows, showed the aged eyes looking far into the future beyond that old lord’s time. And seated there he gave his son his commandment.

Go forth, he said, before these days of mine are over, and therefore go in haste, and go from here eastwards and pass the fields we know, till you see the lands that clearly pertain to faery; and cross their boundary, which is made of twilight, and come to that palace that is only told of in song.

It is far from here, said the young man Alveric.

Yes, answered he, it is far.

And further still, the young man said, to return. For distances in those fields are not as here.

Even so, said his father.

What do you bid me do, said the son, when I come to that palace?

And his father said: To wed the King of Elfland’s daughter.

The young man thought of her beauty and crown of ice, and the sweetness that fabulous runes had told was hers. Songs were sung of her on wild hills where tiny strawberries grew, at dusk and by early starlight, and if one sought the singer no man was there. Sometimes only her name was sung softly over and over. Her name was Lirazel.

She was a princess of the magic line. The gods had sent their shadows to her christening, and the fairies too would have gone, but that they were frightened to see on their dewy fields the long dark moving shadows of the gods, so they stayed hidden in crowds of pale pink anemones, and thence blessed Lirazel.

My people demand a magic lord to rule over them. They have chosen foolishly, the old lord said, and only the Dark Ones that show not their faces know all that this will bring: but we, who see not, follow the ancient custom and do what our people in their parliament say. It may be some spirit of wisdom they have not known may save them even yet. Go then with your face turned towards that light that beats from fairyland, and that faintly illumines the dusk between sunset and early stars, and this shall guide you till you come to the frontier and have passed the fields we know.

Then he unbuckled a strap and a girdle of leather and gave his huge sword to his son, saying: This that has brought our family down the ages unto this day shall surely guard you always upon your journey, even though you fare beyond the fields we know.

And the young man took it though he knew that no such sword could avail him.

Near the Castle of Erl there lived a lonely witch, on high land near the thunder, which used to roll in Summer along the hills. There she dwelt by herself in a narrow cottage of thatch and roamed the high fields alone to gather the thunderbolts. Of these thunderbolts, that had no earthly forging, were made, with suitable runes, such weapons as had to parry unearthly dangers.

And alone would roam this witch at certain tides of Spring, taking the form of a young girl in her beauty, singing among tall flowers in gardens of Erl. She would go at the hour when hawk-moths first pass from bell to bell. And of those few that had seen her was this son of the Lord of Erl. And though it was calamity to love her, though it rapt men’s thoughts away from all things true, yet the beauty of the form that was not hers had lured him to gaze at her with deep young eyes, till—whether flattery or pity moved her, who knows that is mortal?—she spared him whom her arts might well have destroyed and, changing instantly in that garden there, showed him the rightful form of a deadly witch. And even then his eyes did not at once forsake her, and in the moments that his glance

Reviews for The King of Elfland's Daughter

[marklacy-355086 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A little difficult at times to get through Dunsany's flowing prose. Not extremely interesting, very little if any excitement.

[electrascaife · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The people come to the lord of the realm and ask him to find them a magic lord to rule them in his stead. He recognizes the foolishness of their request, but sends his son to the elvish world to find and bring back the daughter of the elf king as a wife. Things...don't go as planned. She turns out to be like any other Other Wife, unsuited and unwilling to conform to common ways. Also, the elf king isn't exactly best pleased with the arrangement. Consequences ensue. *Sigh* I was excited about this one. I tend to love this kind of thing, and when I read Neil Gaiman's introduction to the book, in which he practically gushes over how wonderful the story is, I couldn't wait to get into it. And then...I couldn't. Get into it, that is. It was written in 1924 but pretends to be much older, language-wise, which I found irritating. And the narrator is too far removed from the characters for my taste, which is, I realize, another old-timey quality, so kudos to Dunsany, I guess, for mastering his fake language antiquities. But I'm frustrated by my not really enjoying it, because not only Gaiman, but tons of other name brand authors absolutely love this book and I just can't see why. Gah. I have FOMO and I'm mad about it.

[n.w.moors-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've read that Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, wrote with a quill, filling page after page just letting the words flow. That is how The King of Elfland's Daughter reads, a tone poem of fantasy, magic, and words. The story meanders on a river of prose, some of it somewhat archaic but always beautiful. This is high fantasy at its best. An earthling prince falls in love with an Elf princess and brings her away from her kingdom. They have a son, part magic and part human. But life in fantasies is never smooth.This is a small book but took me some time to read, partly because I often stopped to savor the prose. "And her voice had the music that, of earthly things, was most like ice in thousands of broken pieces rocked by a wind of Spring upon lakes in some northern country."Dunsany was hailed as the "Kings of Dreams". I think this passage from this book illustrates his writing best:"And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills."

[libbromus · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Poetical? Yes. In a class with Tolkein? Uhm, no. Admired by Neil Gaiman? Apparently, yes. Admired by me? No. This story is light on character development, light on plot, pretty much humorless, with poor parenting choices, and loads of slaughtered beasts, including a ghastly unicorn hunt which nearly made me put the book down (yep, definitely judging here - I would make a terrible anthropologist). It reminds me of the Bible. No, seriously. For the aforementioned reasons but also, I'd say 90% of the sentences and paragraphs begin with "And," as in "And then when ..." "And the next day ..." "And there was ..." followed by phrases like "thus (such and such...)" and "for (such and such)." Some examples:"And Alveric would not speak the words ... for no man, he foolishly thought, should compromise in matters touching on heathenesse.""And to the land thus expectant, thus watchful ..."The young person in this story is abandoned by both of his parents and goes feral, becoming a bloodthirsty hunter of, it seems, anything that wasn't his pack of hunting dogs. He killed animals, wore animals, ate animals, and dreamed of killing more animals. Special guy.Luckily, it's short. But really, this could be a 20 page picture book for tykes and I'd get the very same message. Come to that, I don't have a clue what the message might be. Scratch that idea.

[plappen_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Written in the early 20th century, This fantasy tale is about a small town that wishes to be ruled by a magic lord.Several leading citizens of the Vale of Erl go to their King, suggesting that a magic lord will help their town to be famous far and wide. The King sends his son, Alveric, into Elfland to bring back Lirazel, the King's daughter, as his bride. The misty border between the two lands causes those who live just to the west of Elfland to pretend that the compass direction of East, toward Elfland, does not exist.Lirazel produces a son, Orion, but the marriage is not happy. She is unwilling, or unable, to give up her belief in praying to the stars, in favor of Alveric's religion. In his desperation to get her back, Lirazel's father sent over a powerful rune to Lirazel, which she puts in a drawer. She knows that if she reads the rune, it will immediately send her back to Elfland. After being told, again, to give up her religion, now, in frustration, Lirazel uses the rune. Alveric immediately goes after her. After traveling for several days through a vast wasteland, he is forced to realize that not only has the castle of Elfland disappeared, but the entire land of Elfland has vanished.Alveric goes back to Erl and puts together an expedition to the far North to find some piece of Elfland that is not gone. After several years, a couple of members of the expedition return to Erl, no longer as committed to finding Elfland as they once were. Alveric shows no sign of giving up. Watching with her father, Lirazel begins to think that maybe she should go back to Alveric. Do they get back together? Do the people of Erl get their wish to be ruled by a magic lord?This was written in a very different time, so it is not a quick read; it will take some effort on the part of the reader. But that effort will be richly rewarded, because Dunsany, one of the overall masters of the fantasy field, does a wonderful job with the language and descriptions of this story. It is lyrical and poetic and it is a joy to read.

[bayardus-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The King of Elfland's Daughter has some beautiful writing and does not take the usual fantasy route, but ultimately I only thought it was okay.

The overarching theme I got from this book is that the grass always looks greener (or in this case more twilight colored) on the other side. The event that sets the book in motion is a delegation of the common people asking their lord for a magical ruler. They imagine this distinction will bring them fame and happiness, but when they finally get their wish they come to regret it. Likewise the titular daughter yearns for the purples of Elfland when she is first brought to our world, then yearns for our world upon her return to her own. Ditto her husband, ditto a bunch of trolls. This brings the resolution into question in an interesting way as well: if the grass always appears greener when it isn't, then the King of Elfland's decision to use his final rune might have been the wrong one, as it seemingly abolishes the divide between the two worlds. Will this lead to the best of both worlds, or will it leave everyone pining for worlds that no longer exist? We don't find out, but the dark future that the King foresees doesn't suggest an easy journey.

Lord Dunsany can write well, and it was fun to read a work of fantasy that heavily influenced what followed (Lud-in-the-Mist comes to mind especially), but some flaws were that characters lacked much characterization and underwent no development, and that some of the sections of the story seemed rather pointless. Orion's infatuation for hunting, and eventually for hunting unicorns, serves to make the barriers between worlds more porous, but a lot of time was spent on it when the same could have been accomplished in far fewer pages. Other segments seemed overlong as well.

This book is loads better than most fantasy out there, so it's worth reading if you're a fan of the genre, but overall I found it pretty good instead of great.

[bluesalamanders · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The council of Erl gather and speak and decide that they want their next lord to be magical. They tell their ruler this, and he sends his son to Elfland to find and marry the King of Elfland’s daughter.I was surprised that the prince managed to find and marry the princess within the first chapter. That meant that the rest of the book had to be about - other things. It is a slow and meandering tale, with intricate and poetic language and not a lot of action. Sometimes I found the style and speed distracting, but generally I enjoyed it.I thought I first heard of this book in a preface or afterward in one of Robin McKinley’s novels, though I can’t find it now. It makes sense, though; I can see the influence of this book’s style and language and characters throughout her work.I'm glad I read it, but I'll be honest: it's not a book I'm planning to read again, and I wouldn't recommend it to most people.

[hellcold · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An overstretched fairy tale where, most of the time, nothing really happens. I went through the story pretty slowly, reading only a couple of chapters at a time, till I reached the end. But nothing changed, I've read endless stretches of beautiful prose about the various fantastic flowers and animals of Elfland, so what?Some people liked this story. I didn't.Three stars because it was well written, and because it could have been much, much better...

[ragwaine · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've read a bunch of Dunsany's short stuff and really liked it but this is his first novel that I've read (I don't think he has too many novels). The style is not exactly Shakespeareian but it is definitely a type of vaulted prose that would turn many people off. It's filled with run-on sentences that sometimes lose the subject but still sound beautiful.The plot was interesting and the characters memorable, I really enjoyed reading names like Ziroonderel and Lirazel aloud in my fantasy-accented voice.Not much happened in the way of action to be found here. It does have fairy-talesque quality but the ending was not typical and in some ways a let down for me.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was recommended in A Reader's Guide to Fantasy on it's "Seven-League Shelf"--a list of the 33 most important books in the genre--at least as of 1982 when the guide was published. The King of Elfland's Daughter was published in 1924--well before CS Lewis' Narnia or Tolkien's Chronicles of Middle Earth. The writing has a fairy tale quality--although as Lin Carter who wrote the introduction points out, it's rather subversive in twisting the requisite happily ever after. The heart of the story begins when most fairy tales end--after the marriage of the fairy princess. The style is lyrical, with the cadence and repetitions of an epic poem (often repeated is the phrase "the fields we know"). Its language is slightly archaic (not as much as in parts of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings though) and there's little dialogue, which contributes to the rather ponderous feel. At times the book sported long sinuous sentences. Here's a quote that gives you a flavor:Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shriveled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets.I loved the way Lirazel, the King of Elfland's daughter, is painted. Her alien mindset, how she's never at home in our world, yet once she returns to Elfland pines for earthly things. Next to her, Tolkien's elven maidens are mundane. The ordinary and human village of Erl and the magical Elfland clash and conflict and connect in ways I didn't expect. Our foxes are creatures of fable there, as their unicorns are here--and both occasionally pass boundaries. There be trolls. Not evil lumbering monsters, but mischievous, agile, curious. The troll Lurulu is a winning character. There are powerful magical runes, and even a fellowship on a quest. This isn't a fast-paced action tale but rather the opposite, rather dreamy and slow moving, and although it's not very long--248 pages in my edition--it's not the kind of story you rush through, and probably will strike the usual fantasy reader as rather weird really. I wouldn't count it as a favorite, exactly. I can't imagine ever rereading it. The characters are a bit thin, not the kind I fall in love with and want to revisit. But Lord Dunsany created a unique fantastic landscape I found well worth journeying through. His book has a shimmering otherworldly quality that reminds me of Debussey's tone poem La Cathédrale Engloutie.

[atimco-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, first published in 1924, is widely acknowledged as a classic work of fantasy fiction. This is Dunsany's second novel and probably the most famous among his large body of work. It tells how the parliament of Erl asks its lord Alveric to bring magic to their isolated valley. Alveric crosses over into Elfland and wins the King of Elfland's daughter, but Lirazel is restless in the mortal world. Eventually her father's powerful rune compels her to leave her husband and son Orion for the ageless calm of Elfland. Alveric sets out on a hopeless quest to bring her back, while Orion grows up and becomes a hunter. Everything seems ordinary until Orion begins to hear the horns of Elfland, and hunts his first unicorn. And Lirazel languishes amidst the astonishing beauty of her father's realm, sighing for earthly things.Oh, Dunsany's writing... I can't get over it, and apparently it has taken many other readers the same way. It is full of phrases to savor like the lines of a poem, and almost demands to be read slowly. Its archaic touch is courtesy of Dunsany's abiding love for the language of the King James Bible and his admiration of an earlier fantasy author, William Morris. His graceful style has had a powerful influence on the authors who followed; I saw elements and ideas picked up by Patricia McKillip, J. R. R. Tolkien, and possibly C. S. Lewis, to name a few. I can't describe his distinctive voice adequately; you simply must read it for yourself.At the core of Dunsany's imagination is the idea that Elfland, or magic/enchantment, is a place bordering our ordinary everyday world ("the fields we know")—and it is far from benign. Its strangeness is not welcoming and its creatures operate under a completely different set of ideas about the world. Sometimes these differences lead to hilarity (like when we get a glimpse of the trolls' perceptions of the human world) and other times the differences are tragic (as when Alveric, angry, is unable to understand his wife's attempts to worship the Christom God by practicing worshiping the stars first). I've only found this sense of profound, unbridgeable otherness in a few other authors (one of whom is Peter S. Beagle, who cites Dunsany as a strong influence). There is tension that eventually breaks into antagonism between Christianity and Elfland; "For between Elfland and Heaven there is no path, no flight, no way; and neither sends ambassador to the other" (219). The Freer (Christian priest) curses Elfland and all its inhabitants, which carves out a little island of unenchanted ground for him when Erl is taken into Elfland. He isn't a sympathetic figure in his harsh denunciations of magic, but Dunsany calls him "the good man," and the ordinary people who once defied his dictums by longing for magic come to regret it. Christianity isn't benign... but neither is Elfland. Over and over again we are reminded that elvish creatures are "beyond the hope of blessedness" in the Christian Heaven, which, left undescribed, seems pale and unreal next to the lush enchanted lands. I don't like the dichotomy, that the two realms are innately opposed to one another. Interestingly, Dunsany's descriptions of Elfland remind me strongly of Lewis' New Narnia—which of course is his conception of the New Heavens and the New Earth described in the Bible. I don't usually care for Neil Gaiman, but he writes a nice introduction to this novel. He's right about taking the time to savor it; usually I read at a breakneck speed but something about this book forced me to slow down. This story is a distinctive experience; I will seek out more of Dunsany's strange wine.

[charlesferdinand_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is usually called a fantasy novel, which I think doesn't do it justice. It leads the reader to expect high adventure and action, while in fact this book is a very poetic fairytale about human dreams and aspirations. So, depending on your viewpoint, this is the most boring book ever, or a wonderful and enchanting tale. I found it beautifully written, and for all its whimsy, it has much wisdom. Not recommended for unicorn lovers, however.

[jonathangorman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pretty good. The start of the book is a little dry. From what little I know of Dunsany I'd guess it was a later book. His use of language is far less flowery than in some of his work and was a bit difficult for me to get the flow of at first. Once the book got going though it was very, very good. I could also easily see reading this to a kid. If you like fantasy, this is a good one to start with. Look online if you don't mind reading. It should be out of copyright in most places, although I'm not a lawyer ;).

[twilightnocturne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In a different world, and a different time, "The King of Elfland's Daughter" is a fantasy novel that came before fantasy was even an actual genre. Lord Dunsany, an Irish writer & poet, known heavily for his short stories, was a one of a kind talent in his time -- painting new, lush, imaginative worlds with strange an engaging characters and plots. To put it as clear as possible, Mr. Dunsany crossed the boundaries of twilight when it came to creative writing, and is in many ways, a pioneer of the genre itself. Written before more mainstream and well known fantasy works such as The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, "The King of Elfland's Daughter" is a beautifully written fairy tale of elves, unicorns, princesses, magic, and so much more.Set in the vale of Erl, "The King Of Elfland's Daughter" starts it's tale with one of our main characters, Alveric, who is sent beyond the fields we know; into the world of faerie. His mission, assigned to him by his father and lord of erl, is to cross the border of twilight and bring back the elven princess of Faerie for the purpose of enchanting Erl with magic -- breaking it free from its mundane, all-to-worldly existence. Well, all goes well quite fast..and the story starts as many would end -- with a happily ever after -- or should I say, where the happily ever after would start. Though unlike most books where the happily ever after is on the closing page, THIS happily ever after is brought to the forefront just within the first few chapters, and soon goes sour, and that, in essence, is where the heart of the story begins and lies. The experience after the happily ever after.Filled with beautiful, descriptive, and poetic imagery, "The King Of Elfland's Daughter" is a book that should not be devoured -- but savored. Lord Dunsany is a true story teller, and wraps this unique tale with a complex writing style of his own -- one that archaically paints the picture -- bringing the words and characters and actions to life. Enhancing them with a certain kind of magic – the magic of wonder, imagination, and power. While some may find his style a bit much -- perhaps, a bit TOO descriptive or wordy, I found it enchanting in it's own right -- for without this special touch, the story would not have been as majestically effective.Aside from the brilliant writing style, and poetic feel of this lovely piece, I also must point out that I enjoyed the contrast between Elfland and Erl. The distinct variation in time, in motion, in change. While Elfland stood nearly changeless, frozen in it's perfective beauty, the real world went on and withered, and died, and bloomed, and prospered. The sun would rise, and then set. The stars would come out – the moon would grace the sky. And while the people of Erl longed for the ageless beautify of the magnificent Elfland, other creatures in Elfland we're equally fascinated and entranced by the beauty of change – the beauty of the fields WE know. I liked this concept – the concept of the grass always being greener on the other side, and how true it really is. In truth, "The King of Elfland's Daughter" is not for everyone. At times the story seemed to be plod along a bit slowly, and on some nights, after such hectic days with so many thoughts and words rolling in and out of my mind, I found keeping focus on this story a bit tough -- for reading this novel without concentration rather disturbs the experience. But all in all, I found this to be a great and interesting read -- a fascinating look into what fantasy really was and how it started -- and how it became the phenomenon that it is today. And while this in itself, made the read interesting -- I found the story to be fulfilling and the characters to be engaging in their own right – especially the troll, Lurulu (yes I must add this, I did love him). As I close this review, I'll say this -- if you're a fan of Fantasy and want to see how it, in many ways, came to be -- check this out. If you enjoy poetic, enchanting stories that truly rely on the beauty of writing itself – the magic of creating real worlds and characters through the use of language and words -- bringing them to life -- making them real to us, for that momentary read -- then check this out. As said, “The King Of Elfland's Daugther” is not to be devoured. It is to be enjoyed -- savored -- experienced. While reading this novel, I truly felt like I was having an experience, and I hope that you, after reading this, will take the time to do so as well. It is, in my mind, well worth it. So travel now beyond the fields we know, and experience the magic that is deeply entwined with this fantastic book. If you have the patience and desire to read a true fairy tale, one that not only captivates but inspires, then you will NOT be disappointed. I wasn't!

[tadad_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is not a book I’d recommend to someone looking for a fantasy novel. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Recommend it to friends? No. If you are a scholar, or someone who enjoys a read where the language, itself, is the object, or even if you’re a complete-ist reader who’s going to read every fantasy work every written, you’ll come to this own your own and that’s fine; you will probably enjoy this. If none of those apply, then I think this is a book likely to disappoint. The cynical side of me says that it gets such an overwhelming number of 4 and 5 stars because nobody wants to diss a book that’s viewed as a seminal work. The thing about a seminal work is that, just because something was first, doesn’t mean that it will be enjoyed by those whose tastes were formed by the fiction of several generations later —there’s a reason that most of the Dickens canon is no longer as popular as it was in Victorian England. I despise the pendants who smugly brand everyone with less "cultivated" tastes as philistine: reading should be a pleasure, so I recommend people find what they like and read it. Essentially, I think the book will likely be just too dated to be read coming into to the genre cold. The writing is very beautiful in a lyrical way. However, the somewhat archaic style…flowery, dreamy, languid…can require an effort of will. There are long descriptive, sometimes repetitive, passages with very little dialog in the story. The characters will appear thin by modern standards. Our literature tends to describe characters fully, drawing the reader in to invest in the characters. Dunsany’s characters are much more remote, much like Elfland, itself. You are not allowed inside them. In some sense, I reacted to them as if they were part of the landscape we were viewing, rather than inhabitants within it. The plot will also seem a bit simple to the modern reader. The basic plot of “boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” is, perhaps, no more light-weight than “hobbit gets evil artifact, hobbit destroys evil artifact, world is saved.” However, the latter epic was fleshed out with truly evil bad guys, mythic creatures, and substantial adventures. The King of Elfland’s Daughter really has none of that. The challenges facing Averil would seem like minor inconveniences to a “modern” hero. It’s a fairy tale with very little extra flesh in the way of surprise or excitement added. Actually, it’s that fairy tale-ness that provides one of the best aspects of the book. The ending was not the “happily ever after” we’ve come to expect (and, sometimes, be bored by). Just like a fairy tale, it brought home a point of morality that was delightful. I enjoyed this book. I liked the sensation of floating along on a dream that I got when reading it. However, I won’t recommend it to friends asking—I’ll let them find it on their own.

[jvalka_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It took me a while to get used to the author's prose, which is very poetic, lyrical and wistful. It's the kind of writing that's easy to imitate, but incredibly difficult to do correctly. I think this was highly influential on Neil Gaiman's "Stardust" (he writes an introduction to this edition). Even though the book is short, the narrative spans several years, weaving back and forth between Alveric, his grown son Orion, Lirazel and a troll named Lurulu. I enjoyed it much more as soon as I realized that it wasn't plotted in a traditional way. One to read again some time.