Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Introduction © Paul Edmund Thomas 1992
Copyright © E.R. Eddison 1958, 1992
Jacket illustration by John Howe © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2014
E.R. Eddison asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007578177
Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007578184
Version: 2014-09-16
To you, madonna mia,
WINIFRED GRACE EDDISON
and to my mother,
HELEN LOUISA EDDISON
and to my friends,
JOHN AND ALICE REYNOLDS
and to
HARRY PIRIE-GORDON
a fellow explorer in whom (as in Lessingham)
I find that rare mixture of man of action and
connoisseur of strangeness and beauty in their
protean manifestations, who laughs where I laugh
and likes the salt that I like, and to whom I owe
my acquaintance (through the Orkneyinga Saga)
with the earthly ancestress
of my Lady Rosma Parry
I dedicate this book.
E. R. E.
Proper names the reader will no doubt pronounce as he chooses. But perhaps, to please me, he will keep the i’s short in Zimiamvia and accent the third syllable: accent the second syllable in Zayana, give it a broad a (as in ‘Guiana’), and pronouce the ay in the first syllable – and the ai in Laimak, Kaima, etc., and the ay in Krestenaya – like the ai in ‘aisle’; keep the g soft in Fingiswold: let Memison echo ‘denizen’ except for the m: accent the first syllable in Rerek and make it rhyme with ‘year’: pronounce the first syllable of Reisma ‘rays’; remember that Fiorinda is in origin an Italian name, Amaury, Amalie, and Beroald French, and Antiope, Zenianthe, and a good many others, Greek: last, regard the sz in Meszria as ornamental, and not be deterred from pronouncing it as plain ‘Mezria’.
Let me not to the marriage of true mindes
Admit impediments, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration findes,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no, it is an ever fixed marke
That lookes on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandring barke,
Whose worths unknowns, although his higth be taken.
Love’s not Times foole, though rosie lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickles compasse come,
Love alters not with his breefe houres and weekes,
But beares it out even to the edge of doome:
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
SHAKESPEARE
And ride in triumph through Persepolis!
Is it not brave to be a King, Techelles?
Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not passing brave to be a King,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis?
MARLOWE
I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the highest respect and can admire it in others: but it has not the richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love after my own heart.
KEATS
CONTENTS
Introduction by Paul Edmund Thomas
Prefatory Note by Colin Rücker Eddison