Editing Lord Dunsany (section)

===Title and marriage===
[[File:Beatrice Child Villiers.jpg|thumb|upright=.70|Beatrice Child Villiers, Lady Dunsany]]
The title passed to him at his father's death in 1899 at a fairly young age. The young Lord Dunsany returned to [[Dunsany Castle]] after war duty, in 1901. In that year he was also confirmed as an elector for the [[List of Irish representative peers|Irish representative peer]]s in the [[House of Lords]].

In 1903, he met Lady Beatrice Child Villiers (1880–1970), youngest daughter of [[Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey|The 7th Earl of Jersey]] (head of the Jersey banking family), who was then living at [[Osterley Park]]. They married in 1904.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Maume |first=Patrick |title=Plunkett, Edward John Moreton Drax {{!}} Dictionary of Irish Biography |url=https://www.dib.ie/biography/plunkett-edward-john-moreton-drax-a7381 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210812213538/https://www.dib.ie/biography/plunkett-edward-john-moreton-drax-a7381 |archive-date=12 August 2021 |access-date=2024-03-16 |website=www.dib.ie |date=2009 |language=en |doi=10.3318/dib.007381.v1}}</ref> Their one child, Randal, was born in 1906. Lady Beatrice was supportive of Dunsany's interests and helped him by typing his manuscripts, selecting work for his collections, including the 1954 retrospective short story collection, and overseeing his literary heritage after his death.

The Dunsanys were socially active in [[Dublin]] and London and travelled between homes in Meath, London and [[Kent]], other than during [[World War I|the First]] and [[World War II|Second world wars]] and the [[Irish War of Independence]]. Dunsany circulated with many literary figures of the time. To many of these in Ireland he was first introduced by his uncle, the co-operative pioneer [[Sir Horace Plunkett]], who also helped to manage his estate and investments for a time. He was friendly, for example, with [[George William Russell]], [[Oliver St. John Gogarty]], and for a time, [[William Butler Yeats|W. B. Yeats]]. He also socialised at times with [[George Bernard Shaw]] and [[H. G. Wells]], and was a friend of [[Rudyard Kipling]].

In 1910 Dunsany commissioned a two-storey extension to Dunsany Castle, with a billiard room, bedrooms and other facilities. The billiard room includes the crests of all the Lords Dunsany up to the 18th.