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Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron Dunsany, was born in 1878, a lord of the British Empire, heir to an ancient barony, created by Henry VI in the middle of the fifteenth century. He went from Eton to Sandhurst, the English military college, held a lieutenancy in a famous regiment, the Coldstream Guards, saw active service in the South African War and served in the Great War as an officer in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. He turned aside from his career as a soldier in 1906 to stand for West Wiltshire as the Conservative candidate, but he was defeated. He writes enthusiastically always of his interest in sport; he has gone to the ends of the earth to shoot big game. His first book, _The Gods of Pegana_, was published in 1905. He has since written sketches, fantastic tales, and plays,[46] and latterly introductions to the poems of Francis Ledwidge, the Irish peasant poet, who fell in battle in 1917. Dunsany's early plays were put on at the Abbey Theatre where Yeats produced _The Glittering Gate_ in 1909.
[Footnote 46: For bibliography see E. A. Boyd, _The Contemporary Drama of Ireland_, Boston, 1917.]
The initial American productions were also made in Little Theatres, under the auspices of the Stage Society of Philadelphia and at The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where the first performance on any stage of _A Night at an Inn_ was given on April 22, 1916. It was an immediate success and aroused great general interest in Dunsany's other plays. It was remarked at the time that its scene on an English moor was far from "his own Oriental Never Never Land," and that it recalled in its substance _The Moonstone_ by Wilkie Collins and _The Mystery of Cloomber_ by A. Conan Doyle. Dunsany, unlike the other playwrights associated with the Irish National Theatre, has borrowed the glamour of the Orient rather than that of Celtic lore, to heighten his dramatic effects. There is, in fact, much that is Biblical in his mood and in his diction.
When, at a later date, Lord Dunsany saw the production of _A Night at an Inn_ at The Neighborhood Playhouse, the effect of the play "exceeded his own expectations, and he was surprised to note the thrill which it communicated to his audience. 'It's a very simple thing,' he said,--'merely a story of some sailors who have stolen something and know that they are followed. Possibly it is effective because nearly everybody, at some time or other, has done something he was sorry for, has been afraid of retribution, and has felt the hot breath of a pursuing vengeance on the back of his neck.... _A Night at an Inn_ was written between tea and dinner in a single sitting. That was very easy.'"[47]