Time and the Gods

Time and the Gods (1906) is a short story collection by Lord Dunsany. Published at the beginning of his career, Time and the Gods, a sequel to The Gods of Pegāna (1905), would influence such writers as J. R. R. Tolkein, Ursula K. Le Guin, and H. P. Lovecraft. Recognized as a pioneering author of fantasy and science fiction, Dunsany is a man whose work, in the words of Lovecraft, remains “unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous and languorous world of incandescently exotic vision.” “Once when the gods were young and only Their swarthy servant Time was without age, the gods lay sleeping by a broad river upon earth. There in a valley that from all the earth the gods had set apart for Their repose the gods dreamed marble dreams.” Time and the Gods, Dunsany’s second collection of stories, contains some of his finest tales of fantasy and adventure. From their “marble dreams” arose a city fit for the gods, a sweeping expanse of towers, terraces, lawns, and fountains known as Sardathrion. Protected by mountains and a vast desert, safe in the heart of a fertile valley, the city of the gods is a place to which few humans go, and from which none can return. Dunsany’s tales of high fantasy continue to delight over a century after they first appeared in print. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Lord Dunsany’s Time and the Gods is a classic of Irish fantasy fiction reimagined for modern readers.