The King of Elfland’s Daughter
Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) was a prolific novelist, playwright and author of short stories and a pioneering figure in modern fantasy literature. Born into a wealthy Anglo-Irish aristocratic family, Dunsany studied at Eton and Sandhurst and fought in the Boer War and the First World War. He taught in Greece for a time, before settling on his estate in Kent. Dunsany was deeply involved in the Irish Literary Revival, promoting and supporting the work of his fellow writers. His best-known fictions involve imagined lands with a complex pantheon of deities – remarkable fantasy stories from a time before the genre even had a name.
Erin Morgenstern is a writer and artist whose debut, The Night Circus (2011, Folio 2025), won the Locus Award for Best First Novel as well as an Alex Award from the American Library Association, and was translated into more than a dozen foreign languages; it was named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best fantasy books of all time. Morgenstern is the author most recently of The Starless Sea (2019). She was raised in Massachusetts and studied theatre at Smith College; she now lives in the Berkshires.