Fifty-One Tales

Fifty-One Tales is a collection of short fantasy pieces written by Lord Dunsany and first published in 1915.

Rather than telling one continuous story, the book brings together dozens of brief, imaginative episodes that move through dreamlike landscapes, ancient cities and mythical encounters.

Across these miniature tales, Dunsany blends myth, wonder, and quiet menace. Gods, death, time, fate and strange kingdoms appear repeatedly, giving the collection a legendary and otherworldly atmosphere, even when the stories are only a few pages long.

The book is notable for its compressed storytelling and lyrical prose. Some pieces feel like parables, some like dark jokes and some like fragments of forgotten myths. Together, however, they create a rich meditation on mortality, beauty and the limits of human ambition.

For readers who enjoy classic fantasy, Fifty-One Tales offers a series of vivid, elegant visions that can be read one at a time or as a whole. Its unusual structure and haunting tone make it a memorable introduction to Dunsany’s imaginative world.

"FAME singing in the highways, and trifling as she sang, with sordid adventurers, passed the poet by.
And still the poet made for her little chaplets of song, to deck her forehead in the courts of Time: and still she wore instead the worthless garlands, that boisterous citizens flung to her in the ways, made out of perishable things.
And after a while whenever these garlands died the poet came to her with his chaplets of song; and still she laughed at him and wore the worthless wreaths, though they always died at evening.
And one day in his bitterness the poet rebuked her, and said to her: "Lovely Fame, even in the highways and the byways you have not forborne to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men, and I have toiled for you and dreamed of you and you mock me and pass me by."
And Fame turned her back on him and walked away, but in departing she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him as she had not smiled before, and, almost speaking in a whisper, said:
"I will meet you in the graveyard at the back of the Workhouse in a hundred years.""