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The poetic style and sweeping grandeur of The King of Elfland's Daughter has made it one of the most beloved fantasy novels of our time, a masterpiece that influenced some of the greatest contemporary fantasists. The heartbreaking story of a marriage between a mortal man and an elf princess is a masterful tapestry of the fairy tale following the "happily ever after."

On Midsummer's Eve, as everybody knows, you should leave a bowl of milk out for the fairies. Unfortunately - or fortunately - Fred Barber, an American diplomat convalescing in Yorkshire, didn't take the obligation with proper seriousness. He swapped the milk for a stiff dose of Scotch. So he had only himself to blame if the fairies got a bit muddled. Barber found himself in an Old English Fairyland. At the Court of King Oberon, to be precise. The natural - or supernatural - laws there were, to say the least of it, distinctly odd. Things kept changing. This made the mssion with which he was entrusted, as the price of his return to the normal world, even harder than he expected. He had to penetrate the Kobold Hills, where it was said that swords were being made, and discover if an ancient enemy had returned. He was given a magic wand - but not told how to use it. Through the fields and forests he went, meeting dryads and sprites, ogres and two-headed eagles, on the way. Danger, seduction and magic lay all around him. And, as the adventure continued, somehow it darkened and became more seriousness. At the end of Fred Barber's quest lay a shattering revelation.

The town of Lud was a prosperous community situated at the confluence of two rivers ... on having its source in the Land of Faerie. But being a stuffy, rational, and no-nonsense province--ruled by stuffy, rational and no-nonsense burghers--the people of Lud refused to believe in fairies, elves of the like, and they meted out severe punishments to those who did. But when the Mayor's son confessed to eating fairyfruit and the proper young ladies of Miss Crabapple's school dashed off to the Debatable Hills, even the stuffiest burgher had to acknowledge that a perfect plague of Faerie influence had hit town ... and now steps would have to be taken!

Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) is the third novel by Hope Mirrlees. It continues the author's exploration of the themes of Life and Art, by a method already described in the preface of her first novel, Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists (1919): "to turn from time to time upon the action the fantastic limelight of eternity, with a sudden effect of unreality and the hint of a world within a world".

Master Fantasist Lord Dunsany... unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous world of exotic vision.

Table of Contents:

• About Over the Hills and Far Away, and Lord Dunsany: Happy Far-Off Things - essay by Lin Carter
• On Reading Lord Dunsany's "Book of Wonder" - (1920) - poem by H. P. Lovecraft
• Editor's Note (Tales of the World's Edge) - essay by Lin Carter
• The Journey of the King - [Pegana] - (1906)
• The Fall of Babbulkund - (1907)
• The Bird of the Difficult Eye - (1914)
• The Secret of the Sea - (1914)
• The Compromise of the King of the Golden Isles: A Play - (1923) - play
• Editor's Note (Tales of Far Away) - essay by Lin Carter
• The House of the Sphinx - (1911)
• Blagdaross - (1908)
• The Lonely Idol - (1915)
• An Archive of the Older Mysteries - (1919)
• The Loot of Loma - (1914)
• The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla - (1919)
• The Queen's Enemies - (1916)
• How Plash-Goo Came to the Land of None's Desire - (1916)
• The Prayer of Boob Aheera - (1919)
• East and West - (1916)
• How the Gods Avenged Meoul Ki Ning - (1917)
• The Man With the Golden Ear-rings - (1915)
• Poor Old Bill - (1910)
• Editor's Note (Tales of Near at Hand) - essay by Lin Carter
• The Bad Old Woman in Black - (1914)
• The Field - (1909)
• Where the Tides Ebb and Flow - (1908)
• The Little City - (1915)
• The Highwayman - (1908)
• In the Twilight - (1908)
• The Ghosts - (1908)
• The Doom of La Traviata - (1908)
• A Narrow Escape - (1912)
• The Lord of Cities - (1908)
• The Unhappy Body - (1910)
• The Gifts of the Gods - (1919)
• On the Dry Land - (1908)
• The Unpasturable Fields - (1915)
• Editor's Note (Tales Jorkens Told) - essay by Lin Carter
• The Curse of the Witch - [Jorkens] - (1932)
• Hunting the Unicorn - [Jorkens] - (1974)
• The Pale-Green Image - [Jorkens] - (1947)
• The Sacred City of Krakovlitz - [Jorkens] - (1941) - shortstory by Lord Dunsany
• At Sunset - poem by Lord Dunsany