Into the Archives: Oh, the Dunsanity!

 

Don Rodriguez: The Chronicles of Shadow Valley, (1922; this edition May 1971)

“A coming-of-age story set in the mythical "golden age" of Spain. The titular character is excluded from the inheritance of the family castle on the grounds that given his expertise with sword and mandolin he should be able to win his own estate and bride. Setting out to achieve his place in the world, Rodriguez quickly acquires a Sancho Panza-like servant, Morano, and goes on to experience a series of extraordinary adventures that lead him into the heart of fantasy in the mythopoeic Shadow Valley.” – Wikipedia.

Over the Hills and Far Away is a collection of fantasy short stories by Lord Dunsany, edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the sixty-fifth volume of its celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in April 1974. It was the series' sixth Dunsany volume, and the third collection of his shorter fantasies assembled by Carter.

The book collects a poem, two plays and thirty-four short pieces by the author, including several of his Jorkens stories, with an introduction by Lin Carter. A poem by H. P. Lovecraft, in tribute to Dunsany, is also included. - Wikipedia. Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo.

I recently discovered another quote from the legendary lost work of T. M. Junge, Under the Mountain. It goes, "Somehow, when a new diamond plinks down on your dusty old hoard of jewels, all the gems seem to renew themselves in relation to the clear sparkle, and you can see them again as new, redefined as they are by this one small additional drop of light.” I find it strangely applicable to these two new "old" books, as they shoulder their way onto my shelves and become new acquisitions for my own hoard.

They are, of course, volumes from the fabled run of classic Adult Fantasies edited by Lin Carter for Ballantine Books. I had read Don Rodriquez on Kindle, and so knew its quality, desiring a more permanent presence for it in my library (the vintage of its publishing adding to its allure). The book, besides its age, is almost pristine. Over the Hills and Far Away, on the other hand, is an anthology produced exclusively for the series and shows obvious but unobtrusive signs of wear. I would imagine that Don Rodriguez, being more of a Romance in the more technical sense, was less appealing to the target audience in the 70's than the more overt Fantasy of the short story collection.

In an odd sense, we are kindred productions of the same time, the iterations of these books and I, though our roots go farther back. “This ship, the Moonshadow Harp and myself, we are all the same. We are all from the old world.” – Ishmari, Dragon Quest 8. Who knows what strange paths they have traveled before finally washing up on my shore? 

I now have all six Dunsany books published by Ballantine/Del Rey, so that's a thing. And in my 60th year, I finally discover that "Dunsany" is pronounced "dun-SANE-ee." This will take some getting used to. Another classic Fantasy author with a contra-intuitively pronounced name.