Time And The Gods

Lord Dunsany was the most influential writer in the genre that came to be known as fantasy, of which his stories set trends for that continue to this day.
He was an influence on Tolkien, Lovecraft, Gaiman, Borges, Clarke, Moorcock, Yeats, Le Guin and many more besides. Worlds of monsters and magic, of strange names and stranger tales, were all born in Dunsany’s work. Before him, the closest thing to fantasy that existed was folktales; after him, people built worlds beyond imagining and epic stories in the lands he first explored.