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Lord Dunsany

In today's world, mythical bestiaries are fairly common. In the middle ages, they told of fantastic monsters and beasts that roamed the edge of the world, and today they are creations of whole other worlds, peopled by strange gods and stranger people.

The Gods of Pegana was the book that marked the transition from imaginary creatures in the real world to the gods of imaginary world. Lord Dunsany was the most influential writer in the genre that came to be known as fantasy, of which his stories set trends for that continue to this day.

He was an influence on Tolkien, Lovecraft, Gaiman, Borges, Clarke, Moorcock, Yeats, Le Guin and many more besides. Worlds of monsters and magic, of strange names and stranger tales, were all born in Dunsany’s work. Before him, the closest thing to fantasy that existed was folktales; after him, people built worlds beyond imagining and epic stories in the lands he first explored

Chirag Patel

Lamplight

The Illustrated Original Masters of Modern Dark Fantasy

The Gods Of Pegana: The First Ever Modern Fantasy Collection

Lord Dunsany was the most influential writer in the genre that came to be known as fantasy, of which his stories set trends for that continue to this day.

He was an influence on Tolkien, Lovecraft, Gaiman, Borges, Clarke, Moorcock, Yeats, Le Guin and many more besides. Worlds of monsters and magic, of strange names and stranger tales, were all born in Dunsany’s work. Before him, the closest thing to fantasy that existed was folktales; after him, people built worlds beyond imagining and epic stories in the lands he first explored.

Time And The Gods: The Book That Influenced Millions of Fantasy Writers

This was the book that launched a genre. Modern fantasy collections trace their lineage back to Lord Dunsany, and this was his first work that today's readers would recognise in tone and settings.This was the book that launched a genre. Modern fantasy collections trace their lineage back to Lord Dunsany, and this was his first work that today's readers would recognise in tone and settings.

The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories: Strange Tales and Dark Wonders from the Man who Created Modern Fantasy

Lord Dunsany was the progenitor of modern fantasy fiction. From Tolkein to Gaiman, from Le Guin to Moorcock, his words inspired an entire genre of modern dark fantasy.

A fun adventure in a Spain that never was, in the vein of Dumas and Stevenson, with more than a taste of Cervantes. Don Rodriguez is a young nobleman who is banished from the family castle, and must set out with his rapier and mandolin to win his own estate, and perhaps even a bride. Along with his trusty servant Morano, he journeys far into the heart of the mythical Shadow Valley. Echoes of The Princess Bride resonate throughout.

 “How to describe this book? It's a pretty problem. As might a child, after dashing off to play on a bright summer morning—hours splashing in the river, exploring the forests, duelling with sticks against the Infidel (or the child next door if the Infidel be not available), winning a week's pocket-money at marbles and losing it again—as such a child, when asked "what did you do today?" simply shrugs and replies "oh, nothing much"; just so should I feel, dear Reader, were I to attempt to pin down the precise qualities of this book for you. It doesn't wash. And yet I must make the attempt.

 I can say this much: this is a book to be approached lightly. The magic Lord Dunsany weaves is delicate, and you may raise an eyebrow and start to protest that you know the history of Spain, and the events he relates cannot possibly have taken place in the manner he describes. Moreover the characters in his story are surely stereotypes, mere caricatures, and no such people can possibly have walked those dusty roads, and even if they did they cannot have subsisted merely on bacon. Not possible, you say. But when you read of Morano's noble frying pan, of bacon cooked beneath the stars and eaten at the wayfarer's green table, you might find that you believe in Bacon after all.” [Iain, Goodreads]

Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley: Fantastical and romantic tales of a Spain That Never Was, with a quintessentially British Quixote

Gertrude Barrows Bennett

Also published as Nightmare! A Tale of Waking Terror by Francis Stevens.

Come now and see a strange island peopled with monstrous beings and carnivorous plants, on which vie two brother princes on opposite sides of a great conflict, with a woman who is more than match for either between them.

Nightmare was the first in a type of fiction that became known as dark fantasy, and remains a high water mark in the genre. First published in 1916, this debut novel began the three year career in which Francis Stevens became the person that launched entire genres of modern fictions. With her vast imagination and flair for the unusual and exciting, Gertrude Barrows Bennett created a seed that has grown into thousands of great works.

An exciting adventure tale in which "The air of mystery and the atmospheric buildup are superbly done, indicating a ranking talent." [Sam Moskowitz] Come along for a voyage on a great ocean liner to an uncharted land, filled with strange beast and secrets of alchemy, and a woman strong enough to win over them.

Gertrude Barrows Bennett is better known by her pen-name, Francis Stevens. With a career that only spanned three years between 1917 and 1920, when she stopped writing after her mother's death, she is credited as "the woman who invented dark fantasy". She was a direct influence on H.P. Lovecraft, and in the words of Sam Moskowitz was the "greatest woman writer of science fiction in the period between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and C.L. Moore""

Nightmare!: The First Ever Dark Fantasy Novel

Francis Stevens

Illustrated with images by Virgil Finlay, the artist who illustrated many of Bennett/Stevens' original tales in the strange tales magazines in which they were published.

Getrude Bennet has been called the "most important woman writer of fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1759-1797) and C.L. Moore (1911-1987)". This is a complete collection of short stories by the woman who first explored the dark fantasy worlds of the modern era. this book contains tales that were originally published in Weird Tales, Argosy, and All-Story Weekly between 1918-1923.

Also included is the first known sci fi story published by a woman writer in America, "The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar", which was the very first story sold by Bennett, under the pen-name of GM Barrows. This story predates her otherwise 6-year long writing career by 14 years, when she was just 21.

Sunfire!: Collected pulp magazine tales from the original mistress of fantasy

This book, set in a dystopian Philadelphia in 2118, invented a new, creepier kind of dystopian Sci Fi.
Perhaps the first science fantasy to use the alternate time-track, or parallel worlds, idea. -Groff ConklinA pioneering variation on the parallel worlds theme. -Boucher and McComasA highly imaginative work, one of the classics of early pulp fantastic fiction -Everett F. Bleiler
“Stevens, to her credit, manages to keep her story taut and suspenseful, at the same time that she injects pleasing snippets of humor here and there, mainly thanks to the character of Arnold Bertram, a portly thief who had tried to rifle Trenmore’s safe back home and had also been thrown into the year 2118 as a result.

The author presciently posits the coming of a second World War, and yet her Philadelphia of two centuries hence still somehow contains “clanging street cars,” shooting galleries, and “movie” theaters. (I love that fact that Stevens puts the word “movie” in quotes; first used around 1911, it must have still seemed a newish, slangy word by 1918!) A pseudo-scientific explanation, at the novel’s end, for all the mishegas that had come before goes far in claiming for the book its place of pride in the early sci-fi field... a most entertaining and atmospheric read.”

-Sandy Ferber, fantasyliterature.com

The Heads of Cerberus: The Book that Created Dystopian Sci Fi

In a career that spanned a mere three years, Gertrude Barrows Bennett (writing as Francis Stevens) published half a dozen books that came to define the genres that followed on. she is most popularly known as the woman who invented dark fantasy, but on the way she also invented a new, creepier kind of dystopian Sci Fi.

Today, you would call this a tale of trauma-onset schizophrenia, or perhaps a terrible descent into Dissociative Identity Disorder, foretold by genetics. In 1920, the best way to make sense of it was demonic possession. A true masterwork of psychological horror, from before psychology existed.

"One of the most intense, complete and unrelenting tales of psychological horror ever put together. No gore, guts and physical putrescence so common to horror, but the utter dissolution of a human spirit, as told by the victim. It is also perhaps the saddest book I've ever read, a perfectly realized story of unredeemed personal degradation and its effects on all it touches.

Clayton Barbour, the narrator, is a protected bourgeois son just weak enough to allow himself to be overwhelmed by a sly, dissembling force of evil, just strong enough to be constantly tormented by his weakness. Invited to a séance by a casual acquaintance, Moore, who sees in him a psychic force, he becomes the inadvertent victim of Moore's wife's contact with a channeled malignant force.

From this point on, the life of Clayton, his family and his friends is slowly, inextricably ripped asunder by events and in ways that seem unconnected but are manipulated by the Fifth Presence within him. Bennett pulls no punches, provides no happy ending. In that, it is her most honest work (and perhaps a summing summing up of her own life to this point, when she had lost a husband, father and invalid mother)...

Dark, wrenching, truly horrifying, but a book I can recommend without the least reservation." [Derek Davis, Goodreads]

Serapion: A tale of Demonic Possession from the Victorian Era

Gertrude Barrows Bennet is better known by her pen-name, Francis Stevens. With a career that only spanned three years between 1917 and 1920, when she stopped writing after her mother's death, she is credited as "the woman who invented dark fantasy". She was a direct influence on H.P. Lovecraft, and in the words of Sam Moskowitz was the "greatest woman writer of science fiction in the period between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and C.L. Moore"

“Mysterious, beautifully written, at times hallucinatory, and with a creeping atmosphere of dread to spare, "Claimed" is most surely an impressive piece of imaginative work. The author does not shrink from the depiction of violence and bloodshed, either. As in "The Citadel of Fear," here, an ancient god appears in modern times to stir up trouble, but in "Claimed," that god is never named (although Poseidon/Neptune is strongly suggested) or even clearly seen.

[we see] the horrendous fate that befell the continent of Atlantis, and just how the coveted box wound up in the drink to begin with, and it really is some fascinating stuff. Vanaman, Leilah and especially old Robinson, I should add, are all well-drawn characters, with the good doctor being especially likable and sympathetic. Stevens peppers her novel with many memorable and haunting scenes, including an early exploration of the newly risen, barren island where the relic is initially found; a clairvoyant's unfortunate attempt to perform a little psychometry on the arcane object; and, indeed, the entire final 1/3 of the book, comprising as it does a tense chase at sea. The book has great sweep and drive, and is fairly relentless once it gets moving. Personally, I could not wait to get home after work to get back to it, and the evenings that I spent reading "Claimed" were very gripping ones, to be sure.” [Sandy Ferber, fantasyliterature.com]

Claimed!: The Tale of Undersea Gods That Inspired Cthulu

Gertrude Barrows Bennett’s The Citadel of Fear (1918) is one of the greatest dark fantasy classics, a gorgeously written and imaginatively conceived masterpiece. In a career that spanned a mere three years, Bennett published half a dozen books under the pseudonym of Francis Stevens which came to define a number of later genres. She is most popularly known as the woman who invented dark fantasy, but along the way she also invented a new, creepier kind of dystopian sci-fi.

 When The Citadel of Fear first appeared in The Argosy, H.P. Lovecraft raved of its “wonderful and tragic allegory,” describing it as a “masterful” and “huge mystery” — a “gigantic tragedy.” Although set during the first world war, the story centres around the forgotten (yet active) Aztec civilisation of Talapallan, tucked away in an eerie underworld of the Mexican wilds. Among its many temples stands the black fetid shrine, where the dark god Nacoc-Yaotl is worshipped. When an Irishman and an American from modern-day United States stumble into Talapallan one falls in love, while the other is possessed by Nacoc-Yaotl. Their return to the quiet suburbs of the US is anything but, bringing in their lucid wake a world of rampaging monsters, mutated civilians, and battling gods.

 Romance, magic, adventure, and scrumptious writing are embedded in this lengthly, yet unavailable and often overlooked, masterwork. This edition is accompanied by an audiobook, narrated by Chirag Patel, and includes illustrations by Virgil Finlay (from the original editions of Bennett’s work).