Lud-in-the-Mist

Blurb

Lud-in-the-Mist is the third of three novels by Hope Mirrlees. It continues the author's exploration of the themes of Life and Art, by a method already described in the preface of her first novel, Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists: "to turn from time to time upon the action the fantastic limelight of eternity, with a sudden effect of unreality and the hint of a world within a world".
Whereas in the novels Madeleine and The Counterplot Mirrlees adapted elements from history, religions and literature, her use of a secondary-world setting in Lud-in-the-Mist associates it with the tradition of high fantasy, and thereby with its current popularity. During 1970, an American reprint was published without the author's permission, as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. It was reprinted subsequently by Orion Books during 2000 as part of their Fantasy Masterworks series. A more recent republication by the Cold Spring Press includes a foreword by Neil Gaiman and an introduction by Douglas A. Anderson.
Lud-in-the-Mist's unconventional elements, responsible for its appeal to the fantasy readership, are understood better if they are analyzed in the context of her whole oeuvre.