From "The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla" From steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchids blow, where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and fireflies glide about by night like little moving stars, the travelers went three days through forests of cactus till they came to the open plains where the oryx are. When Bwona Khubla had gone there three years ago, what with malaria with which he was shaking all over, and what with disgust at finding the water-hole dry, he had decided to die there, and in that part of the world such decisions are always fatal. In any case he was overdue to die, but hitherto his amazing resolution, and that terrible strength of character that so astounded his porters, had kept him alive and moved his safari on. There is not doubt that he was a fearful man. . . . * This peculiar collection is a very real treat: we envy you the reading of it. Among the treasures in this volume are "The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla," "How the Office of Postman Fell Vacant in Offord-Under-the-Wold," "The Prayer of Boob Aheera," "East and West," "A Pretty Quarrel," "How the Gods Avenged Meoul Ki Ning," "The Gift of the Gods," "The Sack of Emeralds," "The Old Brown Coat," "An Archive of the Older Mysteries," and "A City of Wonder," and a section he called Beyond the Fields We Know, which included "Publisher's Note," "Idle Days on the Yann," "A Shop in Go-By Street," and "The Avenger of Perdondaris."

Author Biography

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett (1878 - 1957), was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist; his work, mostly in the fantasy genre, was published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than ninety books of his work were published in his lifetime and both original work and compilations have continued to appear. Dunsany's oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as plays, novels and essays. He achieved great fame and success with his early short stories and plays and during the 1910s was considered one of the greatest living writers of the English-speaking world; he is today best known for his 1924 fantasy novel The King of Elfland's Daughter. Born and raised in London, to the second-oldest title (created 1439) in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of his life at what may be Ireland's longest-inhabited house, Dunsany Castle near Tara, worked with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, received an honorary doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, was chess and pistol-shooting champion of Ireland and travelled and hunted extensively.