top of page

The Words of Lord Dunsany


Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (1878 – 1957) was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, who published mainly fantasy under the name Lord Dunsany, including more than eighty books, hundreds of published short stories, plays, novels and essays. The 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter is his most famous work. During the 1910s Dunsany was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world. Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title in the Irish peerage (created in 1439), Dunsany lived in Ireland's longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland, and worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. He died in Dublin from appendicitis.

Here are some of his most memorable quotes:

'It is very difficult to draw away from the face of God—it is like a warm fire, it is like dear sleep, it is like a great anthem, yet there is a stillness all about it, a stillness full of lights.'