Vathek by William Beckford
Nyki Blatchley
During the course of the 18th century, two types of “exotic” fantasy fiction became fashionable. The “oriental” story was largely inspired by the Arabian Nights, gradually becoming available in western…
Nyki Blatchley
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
I’m writing this time about an epic fantasy novel first published in 1954, featuring a desperate quest, a great war between the forces of light and dark, and a legendary…
Witch World by Andre Norton
In a recent article, I observed that, although there isn’t complete gender equality in fantasy today, female fantasy authors are too usual to need any comment. Similarly, it’s hardly unusual…
Perceval: The Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes
So far, my series about fantasy classics has been mainly about 20th century works, occasionally straying back as far as the 19th. This time, however, I’m going right back to…
Phantastes by George MacDonald
It’s been widely argued (for example, by Lin Carter in Imaginary Worlds) that fantasy literature as we know it today began in the 1890s with William Morris’s romances, such as…
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Fantasy authors who want to get away from familiar contemporary or historical surroundings have various broad types of setting to choose from. They can create a fictional prehistory, as both…
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft
We all know what to expect from a story by H. P. Lovecraft. It’ll be a tale of cosmic horror, in the which the Old Ones, such as Cthulhu and…
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber
It’s generally accepted that, though there were precursors, the sword and sorcery genre was created in the 1920s and 1930s by Robert E. Howard, with his stories of Conan and…
The Worm Ouroboros by Eric Rucker Eddison
We all know what epic fantasy is supposed to be like. It should involve a vast war between good and evil (or at least between significantly better and significantly worse)…
Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice by James Branch Cabell
A strange thing happened to the American fantasy author James Branch Cabell in 1920. Cabell was a writer of novels, short stories and poetry who’d been published regularly for about…
The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
The King of Elfland’s Daughter tells of how Alveric, son of the Lord of Erl, armed with a magic sword given to him by the witch Ziroonderel, ventures into the…
The Well at the World’s End by William Morris
Restless in his home, a rural, backwater country, the hero sets out into the wide world on a dangerous quest that has to do with a piece of jewelry. Crossing…