When an influx of fairy fruit creates havoc in Lud-in-the-Mist, a merchant village situated where the rivers the Dawl and the Dapple meet in the Free State of Dorimare, the conventional, rule-abiding citizens must grapple with a previously unthinkable solution. The Dapple springs from the bordering land of Faerie-a country of fantastic inhabitants viewed by the tradition-bound people of Lud-in-the-Mist with fear and suspicion. When the effects of fairy fruit and the creatures of Faerie can no longer be ignored, the stolid mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist, Nathaniel Chanticleer, undergoes radical rethinking and emerges as an unlikely leader of change. A classic of fantasy fiction, Lud-in-the-Mist has had a diffuse but indelible influence on the genre and has inspired such authors as Neil Gaiman, Mary Gentle, Elizabeth Hand, Johanna Russ, and Tim Powers. This Warbler Classics edition includes a detailed biographical timeline.
Inhoudsopgave
Contents
I. Master Nathaniel Chanticleer1
II. The Duke Who Laughed Himself Off a Throne and Other Traditions of Dorimare7
III. The Beginning of Trouble14
IV. Endymion Leer Prescribes for Ranulph25
V. Ranulph Goes to the Widow Gibberty’s Farm36
VI. The Wind in the Crabapple Blossoms47
VII .Master Ambrose Chases a Wild Goose and Has a Vision56
VIII. Endymion Leer Looks Frightened, and a Breach Is Made in an Old
Friendship63
IX. Panic and the Silent People72
X. Hempie’s Song77
XI. A Stronger Antidote Than Reason83
XII. Dame Marigold Hears the Tap of a Woodpecker87
XIII. What Master Nathaniel and Master Ambrose Found in the Guildhall95
XIV. Dead in the Eye of the Law104
XV. ‘Ho, Ho, Hoh!’107
XVI. The Widow Gibberty’s Trial111
XVII. The World-in-Law115
XVIII. Mistress Ivy Peppercorn120
XIX. The Berries of Merciful Death129
XX. Watching the Cows133
XXI. The Old Goatherd141
XXII. Who Is Portunus?145
XXIII. The Northern Firebox and Dead Men’s Tales153
XXIV. Belling the Cat159
XXV. The Law Crouches and Springs164
XXVI. ‘Neither Trees Nor Men’167
XXVII. The Fair in the Elfin Marches173
XXVIII. ‘By the Sun, Moon and Stars and the Golden Apples of the West’180
XXIX. A Message Comes to Hazel and the First Swallow to Dame Marigold183
XXX. Master Ambrose Keeps His Vow189
XXXI. The Initiate193
XXXII. Conclusion195
Biographical Timeline197
Over de auteur
Helen Hope Mirrlees (1887-1978) was a British author of novels and poems, whose three novels are Lud-in-the-Mist, Madeleine, and Counterplot, and a book of poetry, Moods and Tensions: Poems. She was one of the Bloomsbury Group and counted among her literary friends T. S. Eliot, André Gide, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Bertrand Russell, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and William Butler Yeats.