Lord Dunsany, The Lost Tales Series

---

More Lost Tales presented in an ornate edition.

Featuring four previously unpublished stories and five stories never collected in book form ranging from 1908 to 1955.  With dark gods and dreaming poets, some really fine material, embellished with an exquisite watercolour Sidney Sime frontispiece not seen in print for 90 years. ​  We wish to express our deepest appreciation to the Dunsany Estate for sharing these incredibly rare pieces from the Dunsany Castle archives.

​

Contents:

Absurd  1939 Unpublished

The New Look 1953 Unpublished

Gondolas 1908 Uncollected

The Cup 1948 Uncollected

A Taste For Strategy 1955 Uncollected

The Vengeance of Thor 1929 Unpublished

The Tale of The Men of Baldfolk 1925 Uncollected

The Book of Flowery Tales 1917 Unpublished

Pens 1909 Uncollected​​​

Quarter bound fine black silk moire spine with Florentine paper covered boards.  Letterpress paper title glued along spine. Stygian black German endpapers surrounding sage green Hahnemühle laid and watermarked paper for the book.  Hand type set and letterpress printed by Mike,  hand sewn by Rita, and bound by Joel Radcliffe at Ars Obscura of Seattle.

Published with permission from the Dunsany Estate.  35 pages, limited to 80 hand numbered copies.  

Pegana Press 2016

...and Thor said to the rest "It is even as we have dreamed.  The years have been going by and the ages passing away; Time has been active here, and it grows late on Earth.  Unstained and cold are the stones.  It is later than we had dreamed."

--Lord Dunsany from The Vengeance of Thor written 1929, previously unpublished.  Available from Pegana Press in The Men of Baldfolk & Other Fanciful Tales, in May 2016.

Handset letterpress printed editions on Hahnemüle paper and handbound on site using double woven cloth on boards. 

Containing rare material,  retrieved from their original magazine publications, these stories appear in book form for the first time.  

Also included  are 4 previously unpublished stories, rare gems provided by the Dunsany Estate, as well as artwork by Lord Dunsany (frontispiece in Volume 2) and watercolor by Sidney Sime (frontispiece in Volume 3).

Tales that have been dreaming in Dunsany Castle for 102 years.  This new edition of unpublished stories include several intended for the 70 Tales Edition, which became 51 Tales in 1915 due to wartime paper shortages.  We present them here for the first time by gracious permission of the Dunsany Estate.

Table of Contents

​The Mystery of the Invisible Letters 1947 Unpublished

His Lone Interest 1955 Unpublished

At the Inn of the Two Adventurers 1956 Uncollected

The Cycle of The Gods

    The False Gods 1911 Unpublished

    The True Gods 1911 Unpublished

The Unknown and the Earth-Gods 1911 Unpublished

A Vision 1912 Unpublished

​The House Called Life 1910 Unpublished

Death and the Poet 1909 Unpublished

​Included also is a rare watercolor by Sidney Sime 1925 as frontispiece and Introduction by Douglas A. Anderson. Letterpress printed on Hahnemüle laid paper.  Hand bound in blue cloth on boards.  Ornate letterpress title inset on front and letterpress spine title.  34 pages, limited to 80 hand numbered copies. 

Pegana Press 2018

...but above the thunder undisturbed the GODS prepared the things that are to be...

                       excerpt from THE FALSE GODS 1911.

Collection of 3 previously unpublished stores, and 4 previously uncollected in book form.  7 stories in all. 

Hand set letterpress printed on Hahnemüle laid paper and handbound on site with golden brown cloth on boards.   Ornate letterpress title inset on front and letterpress spine title.

Frontispiece by Sidney Sime, a watercolor commissioned by Lord Dunsany and completed in 1926,  its first appearance in print in 88 years. Forward by Mike Tortorello.  

34 pages, limited to 80 hand numbered copies.  

Pegana Press 2014

8  stories retrieved from  their original magazine publications  and 1 newly  discovered unpublished story provided from the Dunsany Estate.  

9 stories in  all. 

Frontispiece by Lord Dunsany.  Introduction by Darrell Schweitzer. 

Hand set letterpress printed in two color ink on soft grey Hahnemüle laid paper.  Hand bound on site with grey cloth on boards.  Ornate letterpress title inset on front and letterpress spine title.

34 pages limited to 92 numbered copies.  

Pegana Press 2013

• From magazines like Smart Set and Vanity Fair we bring you seven classic Dunsany stories published between 1915 and 1919.   Such intriguing titles as The Greatest Painter In The World, A Walk In The Wastes Of Time, and The House Of The Idol Carvers ​to name a few.
  
• The title story-The Emperor's Crystal-appeared in the campus newspaper of Trinity College Dublin in 1920.
  
• The book ends with The Secret Order, a story written in the spring of 1909, but never before published .
• An original drawing by Lord Dunsany was provided by Dunsany Castle for our frontispiece.
  

10 previously uncollected stories from 1909 to 1915 retrieved from their original magazine publications and appearing for the first time in book form by approval of the Dunsany Estate.  Introduction by Michael Swanwick. 

29 pages handset letterpress printed on Hahnemüle paper and hand bound in teal cloth on boards.  Ornate letterpress title inset on front cover, and letterpress spine title.  

Pegana Press 2012

The Heart Of Earth first appeared in The Saturday Review, London,  July 1909.  It was one of the stories we at Pegana Press were privileged to add to our collection of previously uncollected works entitled Lost Tales Volume 1 by Lord Dunsany.

It begins thus.

As the poet walked through the moist, grey town thinking of Faëry and imperious Death, he saw the unthought-of pavement, monotonous, wet, clad with dirt, desolate.  And, thinking of the long time that they had lain there under unheeding feet, unprotected by soil or grass against the will of the rain, he, being at peace because it was now evening, pitied the old grey stones.  And the pavement felt his pity.  Every stone felt it; stone told it unto stone for quite a mile.  It had been trodden on for two hundred years by dogs as well as men, it had been spat upon and covered with filth, but had not before been pitied.
     Deep in it's core it felt the poet's pity; it had felt an earthquake less.


Lord Dunsany shares through his potent writing the ability of creating a portal which transports us into the very setting of the story itself.  Anyone who has walked a lonely road lost in thought will recognize this realm. The smell of the wet pavement - rain on stone.  The feel of footsteps meandering as the mind follows its own fancy.  The power of connection that is the very fabric of reality - that which communicates the feeling of the poet through a network of stone conveying information further down the road.

We are told the poet's thoughts go wandering off into other realms, while the pavement fairly bristles with indignation.


  "What is this that dares to pity the heart of Earth?  A thing of a few years and the toy of Time!

     Is not Earth's heart of the lineage of the stars?..."


And we are allowed audience as the Earth waxes poetic about what it has seen throughout time.

  "...What love should Earth's heart have for the hearts of men, who have chosen cities as their foster-mothers, rejecting Earth?..."


Lord Dunsany was a story teller who could make his point in under 1000 words and he wrote a wealth of material in short story format.

The Heart Of Earth appears in Lost Tales Volume 1 published by Pegana Press; by arrangement with the Dunsany Estate.  This book contains 10 stories written by Lord Dunsany which have not been in print since their original magazine appearances about 100 years ago.

Available through Pegana Press.

  "...Am I not the heart of wandering Earth, child of the sun?

     Who?  Who has pitied me?..."