Has anyone read any of Lord Dunsany's work?

Question

I'm a big Lovecraft fan and have heard he is influenced by Dunsany. Would I enjoy it by any chance?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

I think you would enjoy it. I sure did.

"H. P. Lovecraft was greatly impressed by Dunsany after seeing him on a speaking tour of the United States, and Lovecraft's 'Dream-Cycle' stories clearly show his influence. Lovecraft once wrote, "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces — but alas — where are my Lovecraft pieces?" [14]

Source(s):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plun…

Answer 2

I read _A Dreamer's Tales_ and found many of the short stories to be strange and haunting, but in a good way. I've only read Lovecraft's _At the Mountains of Madness_. I'd say they're sort of similar (i.e. perhaps a similar oddness or slightly haunting quality), but also quite distinct, based on the single examples from each writer. _A Dreamer's Tales_ was actually even a little reminiscent, in its oddness, of Ray Bradbury (or an early precursor of Bradbury, perhaps).

This was many years ago that I read them, though--and I've often heard comparisons between Lovecraft and Dunsany, so it might be that others of Dunsany's work are even more similar.

BTW, I think I saw some of Lord Dunsany's work (including _A Dreamer's Tales_) at the Gutenberg Project when I was browsing through (or maybe at manybooks.net), so that might be a nice, low-risk (versus buying a copy outright) and relatively low effort (versus heading out to the library) way to check out his work and see what you think of the tone and style, before investing!

Good luck!