Discovering Classic Fantasy Fiction

Book excerpt: The antecedents of fantasy literature extend back to the very beginnings of storytelling itself, but modern fantasy became recognizable as a distinct literary form only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the publication of the novels of William Morris and the short stories of Lord Dunsany. The emphasis by these writers and their successors on ideal and sometimes less than ideal places and peoples who exist only in a realm of pure imagination laid the foundation for later works by J. R. R. Tolkien and many others. Book jacket.