"A CLEAR WILD TUNE… MORE MAGICAL THAN ALL NIGHTINGALES": FIRST EDITION OF LORD DUNSANY'S PAGAN FANTASY

DUNSANY, Lord (PLUNKETT, Edward John Moreton Drax, 18th Baron of Dunsany). The Blessing of Pan. London & New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, (1927). Octavo, original blue cloth, uncut, original dust jacket. $1750.

First edition of this wistful fantasy from the author of The King of Elfland's Daughter, in the rare dust jacket.

A rural vicar fights in vain against the hypnotic spell cast by a set of panpipes as his quiet English village starts to forsake "the ways of the nineteenth century," in a conflict not only between Christianity and paganism but also between industrialization and Arcadian nature. This and other groundbreaking fantasies from Lord Dunsany inspired a wide range of authors including H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jorge Luis Borges, Ursula Le Guin and Neil Gaiman: "His influence, especially on writers of heroic fantasy, was strong from almost the beginning of his long career… [his] work as a fantasist is of high intrinsic merit" (Clute and Nicholls). Frontispiece illustration by Sidney Herbert Sime, to whom the book is dedicated. Barron 5-89. Preliminary leaf with inked gift inscription dated Christmas, 1927.

Pages largely clean with scattered spotting to edges and some margins, offsetting to endpapers and two leaves, cloth fine. Scarce and fragile dust jacket with minor chipping, soiling to front panel, toning and small hole to spine, old tape repair to verso of spine head.