The annotated centenary edition · 1926–2026
Fairyland is forbidden.
The mayor’s son has eaten its fruit.
Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) brings forbidden enchantment into a town devoted to respectability. Its mayor has a family to protect and a border he cannot control. This centenary edition accompanies the novel with an original introduction, a map of Dorimare and endnotes on its folklore, language and legal allusions.
Welcome to Dorimare
In Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926), the citizens of Dorimare have agreed that Fairyland does not exist. The law is clear; the river is less obedient. Fairy fruit arrives in secret, and Nathaniel Chanticleer, the town’s mayor, finds the trouble reaching into his own home.
An edition that opens the details
The endnotes to this edition of Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) explain the language, folklore and legal references woven into Dorimare. They sit at the back of the volume, ready when a detail catches your attention. Here, a legal term leads to two imaginary litigants.
Read three endnote examplesFrom the endnotes · Chapter II, note 13
Genuine machinery of English law: a fact the court agrees to treat as true, knowing it is not, so that an existing rule can be stretched to cover a new case. For two centuries property suits were fought in the names of two invented men, John Doe and Richard Roe.Time Warp Editions · Printed page 323
The country beyond the town
The original map accompanying this edition of Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) sets the town beside the rivers Dawl and Dapple. Follow the Dapple west towards the Debatable Hills, or look more closely at Lud’s streets. The map gives the novel’s border country room to unfold.
Around the novel
This Time Warp Edition of Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) places the novel alongside an original introduction and a biographical essay. A separate textual note explains the source transcription and editorial decisions. Each addition offers a way to look more closely at what you have read.
Lee Raymond explores the novel’s legal fictions and the uneasy relationship between civic order and Fairyland.
Hope Mirrlees, Jane Ellen Harrison and the literary circles in which they worked.
The source transcription, corrections and spelling decisions behind this edition.
Lud-in-the-Mist · Hope Mirrlees
The annotated centenary edition, with an introduction by Lee Raymond, a map of Dorimare and contextual endnotes.
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