It is said that Lord Dunsany wrote his stories with a handmade quill in a single draft, and The King of Elfland’s Daughter is widely regarded as one of his greatest works. A fantasy classic which has influenced some of the most popular fantasy writers of all time, including J. R. R. Tolkien and Neil Gaiman, and one of the landmark pre-Tolkien fantasy stories written. It is noteworthy not only for its poetic literature and picturesque imagery, but also its exploration of Elfland, a land of fancy, immortality, and forbidden love.

Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media. The Book of Wonder is a collection of short stories by Lord Dunsany, published in 1912. It is a remarkable work that showcases Dunsany's imaginative storytelling and his mastery of creating vivid and fantastical worlds. The book consists of numerous individual tales, each offering a glimpse into a unique realm filled with magic, mythology, and mystery. Dunsany's prose is rich and lyrical, transporting listeners to extraordinary landscapes and introducing them to a variety of enchanting characters.

Set in a fairy-tale version of medieval Spain, the story follows Ramon Alonzo's initiation to the "Dark Arts" with a magician in order to procure the gold necessary for his sister's dowry. He befriends his master's charwoman, an old, despairing figure who has given up her shadow in exchange for immortal life. Ramon vows to help her while staying true to his initial purpose of helping his sister who, as it turns out, is willing to embrace her shadows in order to choose her own destiny...

The Gods of Pegāna is the first book by influential fantasy writer Lord Dunsany. In a series of short vignettes, Lord Dunsany invents a pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegāna and chronicles the history of their imagined universe. It was followed by a further collection, Time and the Gods. In lush language and dreamlike prose, Lord Dunsany’s talents are on full display as he lays the groundwork for the fantasy genre. The Dunsany Mythos features the complete contents of The Gods of Pegāna and Time and the Gods in a single audiobook edition.

After 700 years of being ruled by man, the Parliament of Erl is ready to be ruled by a magical lord. Obeying the immemorial custom, the lord of Erl sends his son Alveric to fetch the King of Elfland’s daughter, Lirazel, to be his bride. Alveric makes his way to Elfland, where time passes at a rate far slower than the real world, wins her hand, and they return to Erl together. Alveric and Lirazel marry and have a son, but marriage between a mortal and a fairy princess is never simple. Lirazel struggles to adapt to the customs of humans.

A pioneer in the realm of imaginative literature, Lord Dunsany has gained a cult following for his influence on modern fantasy literature, including such authors as J. R. R. Tolkien and H. P. Lovecraft. This unique collection of short stories ranges over five decades of work.

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.

When Michael Moorcock began chronicling the adventures of the albino sorcerer Elric, last king of decadent Melniboné, and his sentient vampiric sword, Stormbringer, he set out to create a new kind of fantasy adventure, one that broke with tradition and reflected a more up-to-date sophistication of theme and style. The result was a bold and unique hero: a rock-and-roll antihero who would channel all the violent excesses of the '60s into one enduring archetype.

The stories in The Dying Earth introduce dozens of seekers of wisom and beauty, lovely lost women, wizards of every shade of eccentricity with their runic amulets and spells. We meet the melancholy deodands, who feed on human flesh and the twk-men, who ride dragonflies and trade information for salt. There are monsters and demons. Each being is morally ambiguous: The evil are charming, the good are dangerous. All are at home.

With Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard created more than the greatest action hero of the twentieth century---he also launched a genre that came to be known as sword and sorcery. But Conan was not the first archetypal adventurer to spring from Howard's fertile imagination.

The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. Included on the recording are several shorter works. The Ainulindalë is a myth of the Creation and in the Valaquenta the nature and powers of each of the gods is described. The Akallabêth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Númenor at the end of the Second Age, and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at the end of the Third Age.

George MacDonald, described by W.H. Auden as "one of the most remarkable writers of the 19th century", was valued in his own time as an original thinker and spiritual guide. Of all his writing, it is the fairy tales that have retained their fascination, and this collection includes all 11 stories. The fairy tales feature the stock characters of traditional tales—fairies both good and bad, and children undertaking precarious journeys. Often adopting paradox and nonsense as Lewis Carroll did, the stories invite adults to deploy the same open-mindedness as children.

When Sparrowhawk casts a spell that saves his village from destruction at the hands of the invading Kargs, Ogion, the Mage of Re Albi, encourages the boy to apprentice himself in the art of wizardry. So, at the age of 13, the boy receives his true name - Ged - and gives himself over to the gentle tutelage of the Master Ogion. But impatient with the slowness of his studies and infatuated with glory, Ged embarks for the Island of Roke, where the highest arts of wizardry are taught.

This collection contains all of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian stories published during his lifetime, contextualized with biographical details of their author.

In a meteoric career that spanned a mere 12 years, Robert E. Howard single-handedly invented the genre that came to be called sword and sorcery. From his fertile imagination sprang some of fiction's most enduring heroes. Yet while Conan the Cimmerian is indisputably Howard's greatest creation, it was in his earlier sequence of tales featuring Kull, a fearless warrior with the brooding intellect of a philosopher, that Howard began to develop the distinctive themes and the richly evocative blend of history and mythology .

After 700 years of being ruled by man, the Parliament of Erl is ready to be ruled by a magical lord. Obeying the immemorial custom, the lord of Erl sends his son Alveric to fetch the King of Elfland’s daughter, Lirazel, to be his bride. Alveric makes his way to Elfland, where time passes at a rate far slower than the real world, wins her hand, and they return to Erl together. Alveric and Lirazel marry and have a son, but marriage between a mortal and a fairy princess is never simple. Lirazel struggles to adapt to the customs of humans.

Allan Quatermain, hero of King Solomon's mines, tells a moving tale of his first wife, the Dutch-born Marie Marais, and the adventures that were linked to her beautiful, tragic history. This moving story depicts the tumultuous political era of the 1830s, involving the Boers, French colonists and the Zulu tribe in the Cape colony of South Africa. Hate and suspicion run high between the home government and the Dutch subjects.

" The Gods of Pegana" is the first book by Lord Dunsany, published in 1905. The book is a series of short stories linked by Dunsany's invented pantheon of deities who dwell in Pegana.

The classic fantasy that influenced C. S. Lewis and Tolkien, considered one of George MacDonald's most important works, is the story of the young man, Anodos, and his adventures in fairyland which ultimately reveal the human condition. "I write, not for children," wrote George MacDonald, "but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or 50, or 75." All-at-once written with an innocent whimsy and soulful yearning, the heart of Anodos' journey through fairyland reveals a spiritual quest that requires a surrender of the self.

One of the great innovators in American letters, Walt Whitman created a daringly new kind of poetry that became a major force in world literature. Leaves of Grass is his masterpiece, written in a pure, uninhibited style, combining sensual and mystical sensibilities. Its bold, joyous voice, its expansive optimism, and its transcendental vision made it uniquely American.

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone...so she ventured out from the safety of the enchanted forest on a quest for others of her kind. Joined along the way by the bumbling magician Schmendrick and the indomitable Molly Grue, the unicorn learns all about the joys and sorrows of life and love before meeting her destiny in the castle of a despondent monarch—and confronting the creature that would drive her kind to extinction....

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of 12 poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting nature, celebrating the human body, and praising the senses and sexual love, this monumental work, now a classic of American poetry, was condemned as immoral upon publication.

"Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow used dactylic hexameter, imitated from Greek and Latin classics, though the choice was criticized.

Complete and unabridged, and read with meticulous care, in this story Miles Standish and John Alden both seek the hand of the fair Priscilla. See the Mayflower abandon the first settlers as it returns to England. Feel the heated vision of the Indians, perpetually keeping their watch in the dark forest. Love and adventure collide in one of Longfellow's most famous works

The tales of The Silmarillion are set in an age when Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in Middle-earth, and the High Elves made war upon him for the recovery of the Silmarils, the jewels containing the pure light of Valinor. Included on the recording are several shorter works. The Ainulindalë is a myth of the Creation and in the Valaquenta the nature and powers of each of the gods is described. The Akallabêth recounts the downfall of the great island kingdom of Númenor at the end of the Second Age, and Of the Rings of Power tells of the great events at the end of the Third Age.

This collection comprises H. P. Lovecraft's main and undisputed Dream Cycle stories, including "Polaris", "The White Ship", "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", and "The Outsider".

It was a time of legend, as the last shadows of the mighty Roman conqueror faded from the captured Isle of Britain. Meanwhile, across a vast sea, bloody war shattered a peace that had flourished for 2,000 years in the doomed kingdom of Atlantis. This is the remarkable adventure of Charis, the courageous princess from Atlantis who escapes the terrible devastation of her land, and of the fabled seer and druid prince Taliesin, singer at the dawn of the age. It is a story of an incomparable love that joins two astonishing worlds....

The Arthurian legend of Camelot has been told many times, but never better than by Alfred Tennyson. Employing some of the most stirring and beautiful blank verse ever written, Tennyson crafted his version of the Knights of the Round Table over the course of nearly fifty years, completing it in 1885. Despite the length of time, Tennyson managed to maintain a high level of style and continuity throughout.

A young Native American, Abel has come home from war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father’s, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people. But the other world - modern, industrial America - pulls at Abel, demanding his loyalty, trying to claim his soul, and goading him into a destructive, compulsive cycle of depravity and disgust.

From a cemetery in a mythical small town in Illinois, the dead speak about their lives. Each free-verse monologue stands as an epitaph for the person speaking, yet the play is ultimately about life, not death. Featuring 50 performers with specially commissioned original music, this is the only audio version of this landmark classic available.