"Unexcelled in the sorcery of crystalline singing prose, and supreme in the creation of a gorgeous and languorous world of iridescently exotic vision, [...] Lord Dunsany stands dedicated to a strange world of fantastic beauty, and pledged to eternal warfare against the coarseness and ugliness of diurnal reality."

Quite so, Mr. Lovecraft.

Those who complain that this book lacks character development, or is "too wordy" (in every case an odd grievance, as words are what writing is made up of) are missing everything that's important here.
As a prose poem, The King of Elfland's Daughter is about the rhythmic and tonal qualities of the English language. As a fairy tale, it uses a simple plot and broadly written characters to explore complex themes through symbol.