Hope Mirrlees. Lud-in-the-Mist. [1926].

Hope Mirrlees. Lud-in-the-Mist. London: W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., [1926].

Lud-in-the Mist is a beautifully written tale of the rediscovery of magic. Hope Mirrlees (1887-1978) plays with the conceits of the fairy story, but has created her own fully imagined world. As Michael Swanwick observes, Lud-in-the-Mist “is a dissident work, written in full awareness of what the proper literary writers were up to, and in its refusal to go along with them daringly defiant.”

One of the great fantasy novels of the interwar period, the book was reprinted in the 1970s and influenced new generations of writers, including Joanna Russ, Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, and many others.

No. 18.