"...by the time I came along (I was the fourth kid), there was a lot of mythology around, mostly in kids' versions, but what's the difference. Beautiful big books with lots of illustrations. I plunged around in those books and in everything else; the Norse myths were my favorite. Sometime in here I also came across Dunsany's Dreamer's Tales, which proved to be another revelation. Dunsany was important to me because he was the first writer I had come across who wrote what I would call "pure fantasy." Today his works probably seem old-fashioned-I know my kids didn't take to him at all. He wrote in a Biblical-grand-Irish-Romantic language, a very mannered style. But as a kid in the 1930s, I wasn't so far from that early-twentieth-century mannerism. What I saw in Dunsany were these absolutely pure invented fantasies: a mythology that one person had made up. The idea that people could invent their own myths, use their imagination to the limit was a wonderful discovery."
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Fantasy authorsPlaywrights from IrelandNovelists from IrelandScience fiction authorsShort story writers from Ireland
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Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (July 24, 1878 – October 25, 1957) was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, best known for his works of fantasy.
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