What do you think?
Rate this book
Up in the Hills
Up in the Hills "is too richly humorous, too full of wit, wisdom, gentle irony, salutary satire and the wonder which Spring offers to the welcoming eye to be read only by Dunsany's devotess."—New York Times
"No one can imitate Dunsany, and probably everyone who's ever read him has tried."—C. L. Moore
The hills stood for untameable things, things wild and no more to be checked by laws than the bright clouds that sparkled above them, and whose shadows all along the brows of the hills lay like a frown…the hills going right into cloudland.
What is there for an Irish lad to do when the old women of his village start leveling curses at visiting archaeologists, curses that may inadvertantly light upon innocent residents? Mickey Connor has a capital idea—he'll gather a small band of friends and take them up into the hills, to live there until the tumult in town subsides.
And how will they spend their time in the hills?
"Sure, I'd like to be a general," said Young Mickey. "Maybe we'll have a bit of war."
But the idyll that Mickey envisions is short-lived. For even in the hills of the newly independent Irish Free State, it's no easy thing, he discovers, to have "a bit of a war."
Yeats stayed in Dunsany's ancestral castle on numerous occasions and described Dunsany as "a man of genius…[with] a very fine style." Dunsany wrote his play The Glittering Gate at the request of Yeats, who wanted to "claim [Dunsany] for Ireland."
H. P. Lovecraft wrote of Dunsany, "To the truly imaginative he is a talisman and a key unlocking rich storehouses of dream." He also said of his own work: "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces—but alas—where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
The critic S. T. Joshi wrote, "Let us marvel at [Dunsany's] seemingly effortless mastery of so many different forms (short story, novel, play, even essay and lecture), his unfailingly sound narrative sense, and the amazing consistency he maintained over a breathtakingly prolific output…Dunsany claimed aesthetic independence from his time and culture, [and] became a sharp and unrelenting critic of the industrialism and plebeianism that were shattering the beauty both of literature and of the world…yet retained a surprising popularity…through the whole of his career."
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany (1878–1957), inherited one of the oldest titles in the Peerage of Ireland. Lord Dunsany, who lived much of his life at Dunsany Castle in County Meath, was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays, and autobiography. He is best known for his fantasy novels and stories, and his writing influenced the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ursula K Le Guin, among others.
"No one can imitate Dunsany, and probably everyone who's ever read him has tried."—C. L. Moore
The hills stood for untameable things, things wild and no more to be checked by laws than the bright clouds that sparkled above them, and whose shadows all along the brows of the hills lay like a frown…the hills going right into cloudland.
What is there for an Irish lad to do when the old women of his village start leveling curses at visiting archaeologists, curses that may inadvertantly light upon innocent residents? Mickey Connor has a capital idea—he'll gather a small band of friends and take them up into the hills, to live there until the tumult in town subsides.
And how will they spend their time in the hills?
"Sure, I'd like to be a general," said Young Mickey. "Maybe we'll have a bit of war."
But the idyll that Mickey envisions is short-lived. For even in the hills of the newly independent Irish Free State, it's no easy thing, he discovers, to have "a bit of a war."
Yeats stayed in Dunsany's ancestral castle on numerous occasions and described Dunsany as "a man of genius…[with] a very fine style." Dunsany wrote his play The Glittering Gate at the request of Yeats, who wanted to "claim [Dunsany] for Ireland."
H. P. Lovecraft wrote of Dunsany, "To the truly imaginative he is a talisman and a key unlocking rich storehouses of dream." He also said of his own work: "There are my 'Poe' pieces and my 'Dunsany' pieces—but alas—where are my Lovecraft pieces?"
The critic S. T. Joshi wrote, "Let us marvel at [Dunsany's] seemingly effortless mastery of so many different forms (short story, novel, play, even essay and lecture), his unfailingly sound narrative sense, and the amazing consistency he maintained over a breathtakingly prolific output…Dunsany claimed aesthetic independence from his time and culture, [and] became a sharp and unrelenting critic of the industrialism and plebeianism that were shattering the beauty both of literature and of the world…yet retained a surprising popularity…through the whole of his career."
Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany (1878–1957), inherited one of the oldest titles in the Peerage of Ireland. Lord Dunsany, who lived much of his life at Dunsany Castle in County Meath, was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, plays, essays, and autobiography. He is best known for his fantasy novels and stories, and his writing influenced the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ursula K Le Guin, among others.
215 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
35 people want to read
About the author
Lord Dunsany
687 books847 followersEdward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 14, 2025
Up in the Hills is a novel by Lord Dunsany published in 1935. It's the second of his novels set in Ireland, after The Curse of the Wise Woman. Dunsany had been told by W. B. Yeats that he couldn't be considered an Irish man of letters without writing of Ireland and the Irish. Subsequently, Dunsany wrote mostly about Ireland. Not only Dunsany's settings changed, but his entire style altered, though not for the best, in my view.
Gone is the whimsical, poetic fantasy that we last see in The Blessing of Pan. Powerful, fantastic elements are still present in The Curse of the Wise Woman, though bent now towards Irish folklore, and the fantasy has almost entirely disappeared by Up in the Hills. Few echoes remain of Dunsany's great early writing, and perhaps these are the only two instances from Up in the Hills:
The book starts promisingly as Dunsany imagines an ancient settlement in Ireland and their defenses against the wolves of that time. Dunsany, however, doesn't develop this idea, except through the subplot of the visit to Ireland of a team of African archeologists to excavate this paleolithic settlement. The wise women of the local village begin cursing the Africans for digging up the old bones they find—though with none of the descriptive power and intensity of The Curse of the Wise Woman.
Nevertheless, a group of young men head to the hills to escape the cursing and to have a "war." The main plot of the novel concerns the adventures of this group of young men as they battle another irregular force, before finally being overrun by the regular army of the newly independent Irish Free State.
Dunsany is attempting humour rather than fantasy in his descriptions of the ridiculous events of the novel. To me, however, he sounds condescending in his treatment both of the visiting Africans and the Irish villagers. How is it otherwise that there is humour in itself in a group of black African scientists excavating a site in Ireland? The "war" in the hills reads more like gangs of boys fighting play-battles, except of course that these young men are firing at each other with rifles using live ammunition. Amazingly, no one gets killed or even injured in these “battles.”
For me, the book strikes a discordant tone, and the jokes fall flat. The humour is no doubt intentionally very dry, but this doesn't save it, and nor does the easy flow of Dunsany's writing. Dunsany's genius and enduring legacy is his early fantasy writing. He is perhaps striving for acceptance and recognition with books like Up in the Hills, but he misses the mark, and it's not a book for the ages.
Gone is the whimsical, poetic fantasy that we last see in The Blessing of Pan. Powerful, fantastic elements are still present in The Curse of the Wise Woman, though bent now towards Irish folklore, and the fantasy has almost entirely disappeared by Up in the Hills. Few echoes remain of Dunsany's great early writing, and perhaps these are the only two instances from Up in the Hills:
Sometimes a black-thorn flashed at them, the mass of white blossom amongst the solemn trunks looking like a fairy strayed from the gardens of elfland into some grim meeting of giants, some giants perhaps plotting war against the tops of the hills, being able to bring as allies the strong North wind and the thunder; but she had come from tending the buttercups guarding her borders, and giving to each its allowance of fairy gold. (pp. 209-210)
... they at last reached Donegal and saw great hills again, going up with frowns into the clouds and breaking there into smiles, hills like old giants left behind by a retreat of the creatures of fable, and brooding on ancient wars. (p. 313)
The book starts promisingly as Dunsany imagines an ancient settlement in Ireland and their defenses against the wolves of that time. Dunsany, however, doesn't develop this idea, except through the subplot of the visit to Ireland of a team of African archeologists to excavate this paleolithic settlement. The wise women of the local village begin cursing the Africans for digging up the old bones they find—though with none of the descriptive power and intensity of The Curse of the Wise Woman.
Nevertheless, a group of young men head to the hills to escape the cursing and to have a "war." The main plot of the novel concerns the adventures of this group of young men as they battle another irregular force, before finally being overrun by the regular army of the newly independent Irish Free State.
Dunsany is attempting humour rather than fantasy in his descriptions of the ridiculous events of the novel. To me, however, he sounds condescending in his treatment both of the visiting Africans and the Irish villagers. How is it otherwise that there is humour in itself in a group of black African scientists excavating a site in Ireland? The "war" in the hills reads more like gangs of boys fighting play-battles, except of course that these young men are firing at each other with rifles using live ammunition. Amazingly, no one gets killed or even injured in these “battles.”
For me, the book strikes a discordant tone, and the jokes fall flat. The humour is no doubt intentionally very dry, but this doesn't save it, and nor does the easy flow of Dunsany's writing. Dunsany's genius and enduring legacy is his early fantasy writing. He is perhaps striving for acceptance and recognition with books like Up in the Hills, but he misses the mark, and it's not a book for the ages.
Displaying 1 of 1 review