and his three volumes set in the imaginary world Zimiamvia:
E. R. Eddison (1935). Mistress of Mistresses. London: Faber and Faber.
E. R. Eddison (1941). A Fish Dinner in Memison. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.
E. R. Eddison (1958). The Mezentian Gate. London: Curwen Press.
These early works of high fantasy drew strong praise from J. R. R. Tolkien (see especially Letter 199 in the collected letters), C. S. Lewis (see the Tribute to E. R. Eddison in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature), and Ursula K. Le Guin (see the essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" in The Language of the Night). They are written in a meticulously recreated Jacobean prose style, seeded throughout with fragments, often acknowledged but often frankly stolen, from his favorite authors and genres: Homer and Sappho, Shakespeare and Webster, Norse Saga and French medieval lyric. They exhibit a thoroughly aristocratic sensibility; heroes and villains alike maintain an Olympian indifference to convention. The Zimiamvia books were not conceived as a trilogy but as part of a larger work left incomplete by Eddison's death. In fact, The Mezentian Gate itself is unfinished, though Eddison provided summaries of the missing chapters shortly before his death. Some additional material from this book was published for the first time in the volume
E. R. Eddison (1992). Zimiamvia: a Trilogy. New York: Dell Publishing. ISBN 0-440-50300-0.
Eddison wrote three other books:
E. R. Eddison (1916). Poems, Letters, and Memories of Philip Sidney Nairn. London: Printed for Private Circulation.
E. R. Eddison (1926). Styrbiorn the Strong. London: Jonathan Cape.
E. R. Eddison (1930). Egil's Saga. London: Cambridge University Press.
The first was his tribute to a Trinity College friend who died in his youth. The other two relate to the saga literature; the first is a retelling of a story alluded to in Eyrbyggja Saga and Heimskringla, while the second is a direct translation from the Icelandic, supplemented with extensive notes.
External links
E. R. Eddison (http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/EREddison.shtml) -- An introduction to his works, with some notes on his personal philosophy, tantamount to a religion, and its relation to those works.
Eric Rucker Eddison (November 24, 1882 - August 18, 1945) was an English civil servant and author.
Lewis (see the Tribute to E. Eddison in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature), and Ursula K. Le Guin (see the essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" in The Language of the Night).
Eddison -- An introduction to his works, with some notes on his personal philosophy, tantamount to a religion, and its relation to those works.
Eric Rucker Eddison (1882-1945), born in Yorkshire, was a slender man of 5'10" and a lifelong and eventually high-ranking British civil servant.
Eddison's storytelling was inspired by an intimate knowledge of the best mankind had to offer in terms of heroic fiction: Homer, the Norse Epics, Thomas Malory, to name a few.
While some have criticized Eddison's characterization of the main Demon lords as rather thin, certainly lord Gro with his doom to endless treason is a wonderful character, as are the opportunistic scoundrels who are the Witch lords Corund, Corsus, and Corinius.
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