Booklist 16:280 My ’20
DUNSANY, EDWARD JOHN MORETON DRAX PLUNKETT, 18th baron. Tales of three hemispheres. *$1.75 Luce. J. W.
20–26193
“In the two hemispheres we know more or less about, Lord Dunsany pretends now and then to set his story. But his heart is in the third hemisphere—the hemisphere at the back of the map, which lies beyond the fields we know. And, indeed, even when we think for a moment that we are in the high wolds beyond Wiltshire, or looking out on the Tuileries gardens, or checked short for a peep at the cloud-capped tower of the Woolworth building, we are pretty sure to be in, before long, for a meeting with the old gods, the gods whom time has put to sleep.” (Review) “The book is divided into two sections, the first made up of miscellaneous, far wandering tales and sketches, while the second, which is entitled ‘Beyond the fields we know,’ leads us into the lands of dream, where flows the great central river of Yann.” (N Y Times)
“A certain abundance of even commonplace detail, combined with a subtle deviation from the usual in emphasis and sequence, conveys successfully a sense of other-reality; but this quality, the true dream-quality, is constantly impaired by a kind of arbitrary fastidiousness of language. Nothing is less akin to the dreamlike than the precious, which is the outcome of an extreme self-consciousness, and we consider that Lord Dunsany’s use of the precious constitutes a serious defect of style.” F. W. S.
+ − Ath p202 Ag 13 ’20 560w Booklist 16:204 Mr ’20
“The stories in divers veins are all characteristic of Dunsany, but present no tricks not already familiar to his readers.”
+ − Nation 110:660 My 15 ’20 560w
“They are essentially prose poems, these tales, whether they express in some half dozen vivid, poignant pages the very heart of a dying man’s desire, as in ‘The last dream of Bwona Khubla,’ or tell of a girl’s longing, as in ‘An archive of the older mysteries,’ or of such fear as that which rent the soul of the wayfarer who bore with him ‘The sack of emeralds.’”