The Collected Jorkens, Volume One

Infobox Book
name = The Collected Jorkens, Volume One
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Lord Dunsany
illustrator =
cover_artist = from work by Sidney Sime
country = U.S.
language = English
series = Jorkens
subject =
genre = fantasy short stories
publisher = Night Shade Books
release_date = April 2004
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages =
isbn =
preceded_by =
followed_by = The Collected Jorkens, Volume Two

"The Collected Jorkens, Volume One" is an omnibus collection of fantasy short stories by author Lord Dunsany, comprising "The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens", first published in London by G. P. Putnam's Sons in April, 1931 (and then in the USA), and "Jorkens Remembers Africa," first published in New York by Longmans, Green & Co. in 1934 (and then in the UK).

The omnibus was issued by Night Shade Books, then of Portland, Oregon, in a leatherette-bound hardback, with a stamped illustration (from Sidney Sime) and no dust jacket, in early 2004. It had originally been scheduled for release in 2003 with a dust jacket illustrated by Charles Vess but the publisher announced initially delays, and then a change to the format, due to the artist's heavy schedule.

The Jorkens stories are "told" in the setting of a London gentleman's or adventurers' club of which the title character and the narrator are members, and usually open with another member mentioning an interesting experience he has had; this rouses Jorkens, who in return for a whisky-and-soda goes the other member one better with an extraordinary tall tale, supposedly from his own past. His stories often tip well over the boundaries of the plausible, into the realms of fantasy, horror, or even science fiction, and his auditors can never be quite sure what proportion of what he relates was truly experienced and to what degree he might have embellished.

The first thirteen stories are longer and are described as "chapters", while the following twenty one are mid-length. The volume has 24 pages of front matter and 334 of main text.

Contents

* "Brief Foreword to the Complete Edition of Jorkens" by the 20th Baron Dunsany (in Table of Contents as "Preface")
* "Dunsany, Lord of Fantasy" by Arthur C. Clarke [(a 2003 version of an earlier essay, noting "if anybody suggests that my own "Tales from the White Hart" was inspired by the Jorkens stories, they will "not" hear from my lawyers...")]
* "Introduction" by S.T. Joshi [An overview of the book and its context, and some themes and stories.]
* "Bibliographical Notes" [Some publication data for the books and stories, noting, inter alia, that of the first book's contents, two stories appeared in periodicals at or after the date of the first edition, and one, "The Witch of the Willows" had no periodical appearance, and that of the stories in the second volume, one, "The Slugly Beast" had no periodical appearance.]
* "Preface to The Travel Tales of Mr Joseph Jorkens"
* "The Tale of the Abu Laheeb"
* "The King of Sarahb"
* "How Jembu Played for Cambridge"
* "The Charm against Thirst"
* "Our Distant Cousins"
* "A Large Diamond"
* "A Queer Island"
* "The Electric King"
* "A Drink at a Running Stream"
* "A Daughter of Rameses"
* "The Showman"
* "Mrs. Jorkens"
* "The Witch of the Willows"
* "Preface to Mr Jorkens Remembers Africa"
* "The Lost Romance"
* "The Curse of the Witch"
* "The Pearly Beach"
* "The Walk to Lingham"
* "The Escape from the Valley"
* "One August in the Red Sea"
* "The Bare Truth"
* "What Jorkens Has to Put Up With"
* "Ozymandias"
* "At the End of the Universe"
* "The Black Mamba"
* "In the Garden of Memories"
* "The Slugly Beast"
* "Earth's Secret"
* "The Persian Spell"
* "Stranger Than Fiction"
* "The Golden Gods"
* "The Correct Kit"
* "How Ryan Got out of Russia"
* "The Club Secretary"
* "A Mystery of the East"

Footnotes