How Shaun Found the Ultimate God, by Sidney Sime. Illustrated for the story “The Sorrow of Search,” by Lord Dunsany, from Time and the Gods (1906).

The Burning of Old St. Paul’s, by John Franklin, from William Henry Ainsworth’s Old St. Pauls: A Tale of the Fire and the Plague.

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 foreborne 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.”

By Lord Dunsany, originally published in Fifty-One Tales (1915). Read by Aladdin R. Collar. Free download available through soundcloud, collect them all. 

By Lord Dunsany and Sidney H Sime, 1905, edited and colored by Aladdin Collar, 2015

Cool go buy it!

Cherished fantasy author Lord Dunsany and master draftsman Sidney Sime produced an early masterpiece of Weird literature with their 1905 release of The Gods of Pegana. The American Eldritch Society for the Preservation of Hearsay and Rumor is proud to present this full collection of myths from a lost culture, with its original illustrations presented in color for the first time.

Upon its original release, The Gods of Pegana became a cultural curiosity, although it fell out of print relatively quickly. It was praised for its ingenuity, and became a favorite of the art nouveau mystery cults. It has yet to see a satisfactory modern reprinting… until now.

Enjoy all of Sidney Sime’s original illustrations in full color for the first time. Dunsany’s complete manuscript is presented in a slender modern volume, newly typeset with elegance and simplicity.

Join Mana-Yood-Sushai, Slid, Hish and the rest of the pantheon in the gardens of time, as their stories are revealed through parable and testament. Unravel the secrets in the “Sayings of Kib”, who is the Sender of Life; shudder at the “Deeds of Mung”, Lord of All Deaths. Other stories include “Revolt of the Home Gods”, “Of the Thing That Is Neither God Nor Beast”, “The Eye in the Waste,” and more.

The Gods of Pegana greatly influenced a number of later authors; in particular, a young HP Lovecraft, who began to conceive of his Cthulhu Mythos while under its spell.