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...

More than eighty books of Lord Dunsany's work were published and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. In the mists before the Beginning, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide whose the Game should be; and he that won strode through the mists to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI and said: "Now make gods for Me, for I have won the cast and the Game is to be Mine." Who it was that won the cast, and whether it was Fate or whether Chance that went through the mists before the Beginning to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI -- none knoweth. There be islands in...

The contents of this little volume are pretty special, and include "Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean," "Blagdaross," "The Madness of Andelsprutz," "Where the Tides Ebb and Flow," "Bethmoora," "Idle Days on the Yann," "The Sword and the Idol," "The Idle City," "The Hashish Man," "Poor Old Bill," "The Beggars," "Carcassonne," "In Zaccarath," "The Field," "The Day of the Poll," and "The Unhappy Body."

Incuding "The Sword of Welleran," "The Fall of Babbulkund," "The Kith of the Elf Folk," "The Highwayman," "In the Twilight," "The Ghosts," "The Whirlpool," "The Hurricane," "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth," "The Lord of Cities," "The Doom of La Traviata" and "On the Dry Land."

My dreams are here before you amongst the following pages; and writing in a day when life is cheap, dreams seem to me all the dearer, the only things that survive. I offer you these books of dreams from Europe as one throws things of value, if only to oneself, at the last moment out of a burning house. . . .

There be islands in the Central Sea, whose waters are bounded by no shore and where no ships come -- this is the faith of their people. In the mists before the Beginning, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide whose the Game should be; and he that won strode through the mists to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI and said: "Now make gods for Me, for I have won the cast and the Game is to be Mine." Who it was that won the cast and whether it was Fate or whether Chance that went through the mists before the Beginning to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI -- none knoweth.