Long before Tolkien's Middle-earth or the dream worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, an Irish aristocrat raised among the moors and castles of ancient Ireland would be the first modern author to create a new fantasy literary genre. His name was Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, but he would achieve fame as Lord Dunsany (1878–1957).

Born in 1878 in London and raised in Ireland and England, Dunsany was a member of a renowned aristocratic family. The family castle in County Meath seemed literally lifted from a medieval legend. Surrounded by ancient ruins, forests, and folk tales, young Edward developed a deep fascination with myth and the supernatural from an early age.

Like many young British aristocrats of his era, he received military training and, interestingly, served as an officer in the British Army during the Second Boer War in South Africa, precisely the same period as Sir Winston Churchill (who was later taken prisoner). However, unlike Churchill, Dunsany's passion was not in empire and politics, but rather in his imagination.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, he began writing stories that departed markedly from the simple "Brothers Grimm-style" fairy tales that had until then been the only reference point in popular fantasy culture. Supernatural and mythological figures belonged to a "high" literary culture, not popular, in works such as Dante's Divine Comedy, the Homeric poems, or medieval chivalric epics, which nevertheless remained accessible to few. In his stories, Dunsany found a common ground between epic and folk tale.

Books and stories such as The Elven King's Daughter created an entirely new style, at once poetic, melancholic, and visionary. His stories adopted the tone of mythology and the hero's epic journey, but were written in contemporary English, in a poetic, cultured language that was more accessible than Greek or Latin. Lord Dunsany's influence on twentieth-century culture was enormous, even though his name is less well-known today than those of the authors he helped inspire. Howard Phillips Lovecraft deeply admired his works and openly acknowledged Dunsany's influence on his famous Dreamlands and the dreamlike tone of his stories. Even the young Tolkien read and appreciated his imagery, as did many later fantasy authors.