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- Reading time of the summarized text: 11 minutes
The Book of Wonder is a collection of fourteen fantasy short stories by Lord Dunsany, published in 1912. The book is considered a major influence on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, and others. The author employed the talents of Sidney Sime to illustrate his fantasy short story collections, but The Book of Wonder is unique in that Sydney Sime drew the illustrations first, and Lord Dunsany wrote the tales to incorporate them. Of the 14 tales, only the last two were not derived from a Sime drawing. The short story "How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art upon the Gnoles" is likely the origin of the term gnoll, used in a number of later works, notably the Dungeons and Dragons gaming franchise, to describe a humanoid fantasy race. The book has been reprinted a number of times since its first publication. The collection includes stories such as "The Bride of the Man-Horse," "The House of the Sphinx," and "The Hoard of the Gibbelins." The Book of Wonder is available in the public domain as an audiobook at LibriVox and as an ebook at Project Gutenberg.
