Time Warp Editions · Paperback
This Time Warp Edition of Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) brings the novel together with an original introduction, a map of Dorimare and contextual endnotes. Read the opening below, examine the page design, and see how the notes explain a few of Mirrlees’s passing references.
Begin the novel
The Free State of Dorimare was a very small country, but, seeing that it was bounded on the south by the sea and on the north and east by mountains, while its centre consisted of a rich plain, watered by two rivers, a considerable variety of scenery and vegetation was to be found within its borders. Indeed, towards the west, in striking contrast with the pastoral sobriety of the central plain, the aspect of the country became, if not tropical, at any rate distinctly exotic. Nor was this to be wondered at, perhaps; for beyond the Debatable Hills (the boundary of Dorimare in the west) lay Fairyland. There had, however, been no intercourse between the two countries for many centuries.
The social and commercial centre of Dorimare was its capital, Lud-in-the-Mist, which was situated at the confluence of two rivers about ten miles from the sea and fifty from the Elfin Hills.
Lud-in-the-Mist had all the things that make an old town pleasant. It had an ancient Guild Hall, built of mellow golden bricks and covered with ivy and, when the sun shone on it, it looked like a rotten apricot; it had a harbour in which rode vessels with white and red and tawny sails; it had flat brick houses—not the mere carapace of human beings, but ancient living creatures, renewing and modifying themselves with each generation under their changeless antique roofs. It had old arches, framing delicate landscapes that one could walk into, and a picturesque old graveyard on the top of a hill, and little open squares where comic baroque statues of dead citizens held levees attended by birds and lovers and insects and children. It had, indeed, more than its share of pleasant things; for, as we have seen, it had two rivers.
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Three examples from the endnotes
The endnotes to this edition of Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) follow the novel at the back of the volume. These complete examples, drawn from its first two chapters, explain a legal device, an unfamiliar word and a belief about fairy food. Their wording is reproduced below.
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
Chapter I · Note 18
Gramarye is an old word for occult learning and magic, a sister-form of grammar: when Latin learning belonged to a few, book-learning and sorcery blurred together. From grammar the Scots also made glamour, originally a spell cast over the eyes.Time Warp Editions · Printed page 322
Chapter II · Note 9
Folk belief held that the fairies took not the food but its foyson, its substance, virtue or goodness, leaving mortals to eat a husk that no longer nourished. The Gaelic word for the same idea is toradh.Time Warp Editions · Printed page 323
A map of the Free State of Dorimare
The original map accompanying this Time Warp Edition of Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) includes the Free State of Dorimare and a plan of its capital. The rivers Dawl and Dapple meet beside Lud; to the west lie the Debatable Hills and Fairyland beyond them.
The paperback
The Time Warp centenary edition of Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) accompanies the complete novel with an introduction by Lee Raymond, a Dorimare map and endnotes. An extended biographical essay places Mirrlees in her literary circle, while a textual note records the source transcription and editorial decisions.
Edition details checked against the Amazon US listing on 23 September 2026. Price and delivery options appear on Amazon.
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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