bobquasit | Authors like Lord Dunsany

James Branch Cabell - a contemporary of Dunsany, and generally considered to be similar to him - albeit more "shocking". His novel Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice was denounced as indecent and the subject of an obscenity trial, although by modern standards it's relatively tame. Many of his works are available for free on Project Gutenberg.

Robert W. Chambers - another contemporary of Dunsany, and another early fantasist. He's best known for his collection The King In Yellow, which was used by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft and others in the same way that Lovecraft's Necronomicon has been used by later writers. Others who have referenced elements from The King In Yellow include Blue Oyster Cult (in their song "E.T.I"), Marion Zimmer Bradley in her Darkover series, and Lawrence Watt-Evans in his excellent Lords of Dus series. I highly recommend Watt-Evans, by the way.

Fritz Lieber was not quite a contemporary of Dunsany, as he was born in 1910. But he was a relatively early fantasy writer, and had a certain poetry to his style which is sometimes reminiscent of Dunsany. A surprising number of his works are available on Project Gutenberg. He was also a noted science fiction author. His son wrote a few rather good novels as well.

Fredric Brown was a contemporary of Lieber, and is one of my favorite authors. He wrote fantasy, mystery, and science fiction; one of his stories, "Arena", was credited for the original Star Trek episode of the same name, although the episode and story were actually rather different (the story was far more sophisticated and clever). He was particularly noted for writing "short-shorts", stories that were extremely short and which often featured surprising endings. Humor was also a frequent element in his work. Unfortunately not much of his work is available on Project Gutenberg, but some is available in commercial ebook format.

Cordwainer Smith was like Dunsany in that he was unique. Poetry and a sense of magic suffuse his works, although they are technically science fiction (he also wrote a couple of thrillers before he turned to science fiction). He grew up in China, and his writing style is patterned on Chinese folktales and stories. He was also an extremely unusual man who wrote the definitive work on psychological warfare. Unfortunately he died young, and only one of his works is available on Project Gutenberg. However, some of his works are available commercially in ebook form. A definitive collection of his science fiction is available in hardcover, as is an authoritative edition of his one novel. Strongly recommended; there's nobody like him, another way in which he resembles Dunsany.

Larry Niven is relatively modern, and in fact is the first author on this list who is still alive - as well as completely unrepresented on Project Gutenberg. Although he's best known as a "hard" science fiction writer (despite being more entertaining and imaginative than most authors in that category), he's also a fan of Dunsany. He wrote an outstanding Dansanian story set at the edge of the world called "Transfer of Power", which is included in his collection Convergent Series (which I highly recommend; that story is what got me into Dunsany). His more recent work has been uneven, but his earlier works are excellent. He's unusual in that he writes outstanding short stories, but also wrote excellent novels as well.

Barry Hughart is also still alive, but gave up writing many years ago. He did produce a fantasy novel which has much of the fairy-tale quality of Dunsany's work: Bridge of Birds, which won the World Fantasy Award. The two sequels to that work are worth reading, but don't quite capture the magic of the original. Again, strongly recommended.

Authors like Lord Dunsany

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