About the Author

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (24 July 1878 - 25 October 1957) was an Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. The stories in his first two books, and perhaps the beginning of his third, were set within an invented world, Pegāna, with its own gods, history and geography. Starting with this book, Dunsany's name is linked to that of Sidney Sime, his chosen artist, who illustrated much of his work, notably until 1922. Sidney Sime (1867 - 22 May 1941, often SH Sime) was an English artist in the late Victorian and succeeding periods, mostly remembered for his fantastic and satirical artwork, especially his story illustrations for Irish author Lord Dunsany. Sime was born in Manchester in poverty. After a five-year career in the mines, including as a "scoop pusher," work at a linen shop, a barbers, and as a signwriter (setting up in his own right), he studied at the Liverpool School of Art (later "College," then joined the University of Liverpool in 1952). During his time at college, he won a South Kensington medal. He is sometimes called "the biggest thing to come out of Liverpool before the Beatles." Sime quickly became famous for drawings and illustrations with fantastic themes, with a presence in Pick-Me-Up, The Idler and the Pall Mall Gazette. The fantastic treatment often masked biting satire, especially aimed at the rich and at politicians. He received an inheritance after an uncle died and bought The Idler, but the business failed in under two years.In 1904, Sime was approached by the author for whom he is most often remembered, Irish aristocrat Lord Dunsany, to illustrate his first book, The Gods of Pegana, finally published in 1905. This began an association which lasted for the rest of his life, with his illustrations especially prominent in Dunsany's earlier work (until c. 1922). For one volume, at least some of the stories were inspired by Sime works (The Book of Wonder), and for three, in special limited editions, each plate of illustration was signed by both author and artist. Cecilia Dart-Thornton is the author of numerous bestselling fantasy novels, notably the Bitterbynde Trilogy. The Washington Post reported that the first summer after Neilsen Booktrack launched in Australia, it showed Dart-Thornton's newly launched fantasy tome The Ill-Made Mute hitting the Herald's best-seller list, ranked next to mainstream authors and 'serious' fiction. Technology, in one swift blow, destroyed a decades-long publishers' bias against fantasy. It demonstrated that what people were really buying was simply not reflected in the old bestseller lists, based as they were on reports from a small panel of bookshops. The reality was, people were buying fantasy - in particular, they were buying The Ill-Made Mute. This debut novel and its two sequels in the 'Bitterbynde Trilogy' went on to win fans and accolades across the globe. Dart-Thornton's books have been listed on Amazon's Best, Locus Magazine's Best First Novels, the Sydney Morning Herald's Top Twenty and the Australian Publishers' Association 'Australia's Favourite Read'. They are published in five languages and distributed in more than fifty countries around the world.