Lord Dunsany lived 1878-1957. His first eight books were of short stories set
beyond the fields we know, in worlds of strange
fantasy, with queer gods and ugly idols and cities full of temples. But unlike later writers of the
sword and sorcery type, his worlds were essentially beautiful, a
breath of fresh air floating down from some
mysterious ancient hillside.
The names he chooses for people and places are extraordinary and characteristic -- evocatively alien, still largely pronounceable in English, and in some stories funny: Ziroonderel, Sacnoth, Tharagavverug, Gaznak, Syrahn, Khanazar, Zingari, Runazar, Oojni, Yarnith, Slith, on and on, reminding us of old Arabian or Indian or Celtic names but without fitting any of those milieux precisely. At other times he borrows words from the fields we know: such as Sylvia or Carcassonne. The south French walled city of Carcassonne had its name borrowed for an unrelated place, in a story of that name inspired by a line a reader sent him: But he, he never came to Carcassonne. This was enough to work its magic on his imagination, and he built the story from that queer line.
Many of them were illustrated by Sidney Sime, who was cramped, full, and rich in style, a cross between Arthur Rackham and Aubrey Beardsley.
His best works are his short stories; it is less successful when he extended the style to novel length in The King of Elfland's Daughter, though that's still good. Less good is the less fantastic novel The Charwoman's Shadow.
An image or theme that comes up repeatedly in many of his stories is that these strange places are within reach of us -- in modern London of about 1900, as he was writing, though I'm sure it's also true of other common places and times. This reminds me of E. Nesbit and Joan Aiken, who also had the marvellous within reach, at least for those who were lucky enough to live near the special crossing-places. The phrase he often used for this fact that Elfland wasn't all that fair away from known places was "beyond the fields we know".
In later life he wrote some stories, not nearly as compelling, about a traveller and tall-tale teller called Mr Joseph Jorkens. One for example is of a river that ran whisky, another is of a single giant diamond under the permafrost of Siberia. These are ingenious and readable, but of no real relevance if, like most of us, you come to Dunsany for the fantasy and love him for that.
Dunsany's birth name was Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett. He worked at the Abbey Theatre with Yeats and Lady Gregory, but his best mythology was not very Celtic. It was slightly Oriental if anything. His title is pronounced, I believe, dun-SA-ny, and it is a very ancient Irish title with its own Dunsany Castle.