AUTHOR NOTES
AND RECOMMENDED READING

This listing follows similarly from the principles outlined in the introduction, the major point being that only authors born five years or more before Tolkien are included. Authors with an asterisk after their names have work included in this volume.

Andersen, Hans Christian (1805–75)

Danish writer, best known for his fairy tales, originally published in four collections. A fine selection, translated into English by R. P. Keigwin, can be found in Eighty Fairy Tales (1982), a volume of the Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library.

Baum, L[yman]. Frank* (1856–1919)

American children’s writer and creator of Oz. His fourteen Oz novels tend to overshadow some of his other work of high quality, including the novels Queen Zixi of Ix (1905), a traditional fairy tale about a magic wishing cloak, and The Sea-Fairies (1911), which takes place in the underwater kingdom of the Mermaids. Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose (1897) presents some of the stories behind traditional Mother Goose rhymes, while in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) Baum invented a mythology surrounding Santa Claus, much as Tolkien would do in letters to his own children, collected as The Father Christmas Letters (1976, expanded in 1999 as Letters from Father Christmas).

Blackwood, Algernon (1869–1951)

British writer of mystical stories, including two classics, “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” Blackwood published many collections, but several early volumes contain his best work: The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories (1906); The Listener and Other Stories (1907); John Silence—Physician Extraordinary (1908); The Lost Valley and Other Stories (1910); Pan’s Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories (1912); and Incredible Adventures (1914). A recent and representative selection of Blackwood’s best short fiction is Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Tales (2002), edited by S. T. Joshi.

Buchan, John* (1875–1940)

Scottish writer and politician, best remembered for his suspense novel, The Thirty-nine Steps (1915), later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Some of Buchan’s fantasy and supernatural stories were collected in The Watcher by the Threshold and Other Stories (1902), The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies (1912), and The Runagates Club (1928). Of his many novels, the most interesting are Witch Wood (1927), set in seventeenth-century Scotland and concerning an ancient and magical forest, and The Gap in the Curtain (1932), which deals with fate, free will, and J. W. Dunne’s theories of time travel (the latter being as well an interest of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis).

Cabell, James Branch* (1879–1958)

American writer, best remembered for his novel Jurgen (1919), which became a cause célèbre when it was put on trial for obscenity. Jurgen is the slightly bawdy tale of a poet/pawnbroker in Cabell’s fantastic medieval French province of Poictesme, a place about which Cabell would write many volumes, later collected in the eighteen-volume set The Biography of Manuel (1927–30).

Carroll, Lewis (1832–98) [pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]

British writer and mathematician, author of the children’s classics Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). Tolkien did not consider the Alice books to be fairy tales because of their dream frames and dream transitions, yet he considered them successful stories. Tolkien was also fond of Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and its sequel, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893). Christopher Tolkien has written that his father knew these works well and occasionally recited verses from the books.

Coleridge, Sara (1802–52)

British writer and editor, daughter of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Her novel Phantasmion (1837), about the travels of a prince in Faerie, was the first fairy-tale novel written in English.

Coppard, A[lfred]. E[dgar]. (1878–1957)

British writer, who specialized in the short story, many of which fancifully describe rural England. While Coppard published numerous collections, his own selection of his best work, The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard (1947), was very successful, and it provides a good introduction to the author’s writings.

Crockett, S[amuel]. R[utherford]. (1859–1914)

Scottish writer. His thirteenth novel (out of fifty), The Black Douglas (1899), was read by Tolkien in his youth. In a letter Tolkien remarked that the episode of the wargs in The Hobbit was in part derived from The Black Douglas, calling the book “probably his best romance and anyway one that deeply impressed me in school-days, though I have never looked at it again.” An excerpt from one chapter (“The Battle of the Were-Wolves”), showing Tolkien’s indebtedness, can be found in note 10 to chapter 6 of the revised edition of The Annotated Hobbit.

de la Mare, Walter (1873–1956)

British writer and poet. De la Mare’s The Three Mulla-Mulgars (1910) is a children’s fantasy about three royal monkeys on a quest, which some have considered a precursor to certain elements of The Hobbit. De la Mare’s strengths are most evident in his short stories, many of which contain fantastic or supernatural elements. A series of three volumes will collect his entire short fiction, Short Stories 1895–1926 (1996), Short Stories 1927–1956 (2001), and Short Stories for Children (forthcoming).

Dunsany, Lord* (1878–1957)

Anglo-Irish writer, dramatist, and poet. Several of Dunsany’s earliest collections of short stories contain the very best fantasy stories in the English language. These collections include The Gods of Pegana (1905), Time and the Gods (1906), The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories (1908), A Dreamer’s Tales and Other Stories (1910), The Book of Wonder (1912), Fifty-one Tales (1915), Tales of Wonder (1916; U.S. title The Last Book of Wonder), and Tales of Three Hemispheres (1919). Of Dunsany’s novels, the best are The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924), The Blessing of Pan (1926), and The Curse of the Wise Woman (1933). The recent British omnibus in the Fantasy Masterworks series Time and the Gods (2000) contains six of the aforementioned collections. Another sampler of Dunsany is In the Land of Time and Other Fantasy Stories (forthcoming), edited by S. T. Joshi.

Eddison, E[ric]. R[ucker]. (1882–1945)

British writer and civil servant. Eddison’s first novel, The Worm Ouroboros (1922), is perhaps his best book, a fully imagined secondary world described in an ornate and dense prose. His later books make up the Zimiamvian series, Mistress of Mistresses (1935), A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), and The Mezentian Gate (1958). These are much more ambitious and difficult than Eddison’s first book and only partially successful. Yet they remain Eddison’s major works. Eddison’s second novel, Stybiorn the Strong (1926), is an excellent historical work whose subject matter is similar to that of an Icelandic saga. In 1930, Eddison translated Egil’s Saga, one of the major Icelandic sagas. In 1957, Tolkien wrote of Eddison as “the greatest and most convincing writer of invented worlds that I have read.”

Forster, E[dward]. M[organ]. (1879–1970)

British writer, predominately of realistic fiction, including Howard’s End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). Forster’s short stories include a large number of excellent fantasies, collected in The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories (1911) and The Eternal Moment (1928).

Garnett, Richard* (1835–1906)

British writer and librarian, prolific scholar, and biographer. The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales (1888, sixteen tales; expanded 1903, twenty-eight tales) contains Garnett’s only fiction.

Grahame, Kenneth (1859–1932)

British writer and banker, author of the classic children’s book The Wind in the Willows (1908), which Tolkien called an “excellent book.” Grahame’s other books, including The Golden Age (1895) and Dream Days (1898), are explorations of Edwardian childhood. The latter includes Grahame’s famous fairy story “The Reluctant Dragon.”

Haggard, H[enry]. Rider* (1856–1925)

British writer and civil servant. Haggard was a very prolific novelist and one of the most successful writers of his time. He spent much of his early life in South Africa, and a number of his writings have African settings. His two most famous novels were King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and She (1886), each of which has been filmed several times. Another of Haggard’s novels that interested Tolkien is Eric Brighteyes (1891), written in the style of an Icelandic saga. In a lecture, he referred to it as being “as good as most sagas and as heroic.”

Hodgson, William Hope* (1877–1918)

British writer. As a youth, Hodgson went to sea and found the sailor’s life to be one of misery. Much of Hodgson’s fiction is supernatural and shows an obsession with the sea, as in The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907), The Ghost Pirates (1909), and the collection Men of the Deep Waters (1914). His best book, however, is The House on the Borderland (1908), about a remote house haunted by hog-like creatures from another dimension.

Hoffmann, E[rnst]. T[heodor]. A[madeus]. (1776–1822)

German writer and music composer. Hoffmann wrote a large number of literary fairy tales, some of which have been made into ballets and operas. Good selections are found in The Best Tales of Hoffmann (1967), edited by E. F. Bleiler, and Tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann (1972), edited and translated by Leonard J. Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight.

Housman, Clemence* (1861–1955)

British writer and wood engraver. Clemence Housman published only three novels, each of which is a Christian fantasy. The Were-Wolf (1895) is a minor classic of werewolf literature, while her final novel, The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis (1905), remains her supreme achievement. It is a remarkable psychological reconstruction of the life of Aglovale, a minor rogue knight in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Out of print and largely unavailable for many years, it was reprinted by Green Knight Publishing in 2000.

Housman, Laurence (1865–1959)

British writer and dramatist. Laurence Housman was by far the most prolific of the three writing Housmans, who include his sister Clemence and his brother A. E. Housman, the poet. Laurence’s original fairy tales were collected in several volumes, some of which contain wood engravings by his sister, including A Farm in Fairyland (1894), The House of Joy (1895), All Fellows (1896), Gods and Their Makers (1897), The Field of Clover (1898), The Blue Moon (1904), and The Cloak of Friendship (1905). A Doorway in Fairyland (1922), Moonshine and Clover (1922), and The Kind and the Foolish (1952) are reprint collections.

Kipling, Rudyard (1865–1936)

British writer and poet. Kipling’s fantasies for children, including The Jungle Book (1894), The Second Jungle Book (1896), and Just So Stories for Little Children (1902), are rightly acclaimed as classics. Also of interest to Tolkien readers would be Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910), which involve mythological characters and the history of England.

Knatchbull-Hugessen, E[dward]. H[ugessen].* (1829–93)

British writer and politician. Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Lord Brabourne) wrote fourteen books of fairy tales, beginning with Stories for My Children (1869). Another tale out of this collection can be seen to have resonances in Tolkien. The story “Ernest” presents a slight analogue to Bilbo’s speech with Smaug in The Hobbit (see note 5 to chapter 12 of the revised edition of The Annotated Hobbit). “Ernest” has recently been reprinted in Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books (1997), edited by Carolyn Sigler.

Lang, Andrew* (1844–1912)

Scottish writer and editor. Lang is perhaps best remembered for editing (with significant assistance from his wife) twelve volumes of colored fairy-tale books, ranging from The Blue Fairy Book (1889) through The Lilac Fairy Book (1910). The series was immensely popular. Lang also wrote some original fairy stories, including Prince Prigio (1889), which Tolkien found “unsatisfactory in many ways” but which he felt had some admirable qualities.

Lindsay, David* (1876–1945)

British writer. Lindsay’s major works are all attempts to combine philosophy with various types of the novel. His most imaginative work, A Voyage to Arcturus (1920), uses Wellsian space travel to another planet as a template for a spiritual quest. Lindsay’s other novels are more conventional but still powerful. The Haunted Woman (1922) is a kind of haunted house story, where some people are at times able to see and enter a staircase leading up to a nonexistent part of the house. Devil’s Tor (1932) concerns the worship of the Great Mother and the reunion of a magical talisman associated with her worship that was broken in ancient times.

MacDonald, George* (1824–1905)

Scottish writer and minister. MacDonald was a prolific writer of novels for adults, but only a few are fantasies, including Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858), his first novel, and Lilith (1895), his last. His children’s novels include The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and Curdie (1883), both of which were influences upon The Hobbit, particularly in the depiction of goblins. MacDonald also wrote a number of fairy stories, recently collected as The Gifts of the Child Christ and Other Stories and Fairy Tales (1996), edited by Glenn Edward Sadler. The volume edited by U. C. Knoepflmacher and published as The Complete Fairy Tales (1999) contains only MacDonald’s shorter fairy tales.

Machen, Arthur* (1863–1947)

Welsh writer and newspaperman. Machen wrote both supernatural fiction and fantasy, including The Great God Pan & The Inmost Light (1894), The Three Imposters (1895), and the collection The House of Souls (1906). Machen’s best book, The Hill of Dreams (1907), is a kind of spiritual autobiography, written in a superb style. An omnibus containing much of his best work is Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (1948).

Macleod, Fiona [pseudonym of William Sharp] (1855–1905)

Scottish writer and editor. In the 1890s, Sharp’s shadowy double, “Fiona Macleod,” emerged, though Sharp pretended she was real for the rest of his life. Macleod’s writings, unlike Sharp’s, are mystical Celtic fantasies, heavy with nostalgia and atmosphere. The best tales are collected in The Sin-Eater and Other Tales (1894) and The Washer of the Ford and Other Legendary Moralities (1896). Her allegorical novels include Pharais (1894), The Mountain Lovers (1895), and Green Fire (1896).

Merritt, A[braham].* (1884–1943)

American writer and editor. Merritt published only a handful of novels and short stories, most of which appeared in pulp magazines. The best of his works are The Moon Pool (1919), which concerns a mysterious portal activated by moonlight, and The Ship of Ishtar (1924), in which a man is taken by an ancient ship to an alternate world.

Mirrlees, Hope (1887–1978)

British writer and poet. Mirrlees’s sole fantasy novel is the excellent Lud-in-the-Mist (1926), which tells of a town near the borders of Faerie and its problem with the illegal trafficking of fairy fruit.

Morris, Kenneth* (1879–1937)

Welsh writer and theosophist. Morris reworked stories from the Mabinogion into two companion novels, The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed (1914) and Book of the Three Dragons (1930). His supreme achievement lay in his short stories, ten of which were collected in The Secret Mountain and Other Tales (1926). His complete short stories can be found in The Dragon Path: Collected Tales of Kenneth Morris (1995). An excellent Toltec fantasy novel about the coming of the god Quetzalcoatl is The Chalchiuhite Dragon (1992).

Morris, William* (1834–96)

British writer, artist, and poet. Morris is perhaps best remembered for his association with the Pre-Raphaelite movement and for the textiles, furniture, and wallpaper he designed. Morris was also especially interested in medieval literature, translating Beowulf and various Icelandic sagas. Though he wrote some fantasy short stories when young, he returned to fantasy in the last decade of his life, writing seven prose romances with medieval settings: A Tale of the House of the Wolfings (1889), The Roots of the Mountain (1890), The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891), The Wood beyond the World (1894), The Well at the World’s End (1896), The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897), and The Sundering Flood (1897). Some of these were printed in gorgeous editions at Morris’s own Kelmscott Press. Morris’s pioneering works had a profound influence on J. R. R. Tolkien and many other fantasy writers.

Nesbit, E[dith].* (1858–1924)

British writer. Nesbit was an extremely popular writer for children. Her first fantasy novel, Five Children and It (1902), concerns a “Psammead” or sand-fairy. Tolkien certainly knew this work, for he refers to Psammeads in the early drafts of Roverandom. Two sequels followed, The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904) and The Story of the Amulet (1906), in which the Psammead returns. Another Nesbit title of special interest is The Book of Dragons (1900).

O’Brien, Fitz-James (1828–62)

Irish-born American writer and poet. O’Brien published no books during his lifetime, and the posthumous collections of his short stories were often severely edited. The authoritative two-volume edition The Supernatural Tales of Fitz-James O’Brien (1988), edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, restores the texts to their original versions. Volume 1 is subtitled Macabre Tales; and volume 2, Dream Stories and Fantasies.

Pain, Barry (1864–1928)

British writer and editor. Pain was one of the most popular humorists of his day, but his fantasy and supernatural stories, written throughout his lifetime and sprinkled through numerous volumes, are the basis for his reputation today. A collection of these stories, The Glass of Supreme Moments and Other Tales (2003), has recently appeared from the small Canadian publisher Ash-Tree Press.

Pyle, Howard (1853–1911)

American writer and illustrator. His most famous works are illustrated retellings of Arthurian legends, but his original fairy tale The Garden behind the Moon (1895) deserves to be better known.

Ruskin, John (1819–1900)

British writer and art critic. Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River, written in 1841 but published ten years later, is probably the first English fairy story written for children. Influenced by the German Kunstmärchen, it still manages to create an identity of its own and remains a supreme achievement in the literary fairy tale. The original illustrations by Richard Doyle are also very striking.

Stephens, James (1882–1950)

Irish writer, primarily remembered for The Crock of Gold (1912), about an Old Philosopher and his problems with leprechauns and Irish gods.

Stevens, Francis* [pseudonym of Gertrude Barrows Bennett] (1883–1948)

American writer. Stevens published only a small number of stories. Her The Heads of Cerberus (1919) is a pioneering work of alternate history. Many of her stories mix elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. A long overdue collection of her work is The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy (2003).

Stockton, Frank R[ichard].* (1834–1902)

American writer and editor. Stockton was a prolific writer of novels and short stories, but it is for his children’s stories that he is remembered. His collections The Floating Prince and Other Fairy Tales (1881), The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales (1887), and The Queen’s Museum (1887) were very successful. A recent omnibus is The Fairy Tales of Frank Stockton (1990), edited by Jack Zipes.

Tieck, Ludwig* (1773–1853)

German writer. Tieck was one of the primary figures of Romanticism, and many of his best tales were collected in the three volumes of Phantasus (1812–16). Translations of Tieck’s stories have been widely anthologized, but only an incomplete translation of Phantasus has appeared in English, as Tales from the Phantasus (1845), translated by Julius C. Hare, James Anthony Froud, and others.

Wells, H[erbert]. G[eorge]. (1866–1946)

British writer, best remembered for his early scientific romances, including The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898), and The First Men in the Moon (1901). Wells’s short stories include a number of fantasies. The best omnibus is The Complete Short Stories of H. G. Wells (1998), edited by John Hammond.

Wilde, Oscar (1854–1900)

Irish writer and dramatist. Wilde’s two volumes of fairy tales, The Happy Prince (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891), contain nine tales, two of which, “The Happy Prince” and “The Selfish Giant,” are considered classics.

Wright, Austin Tappan* (1883–1931)

American writer and professor of law. At his death in an automobile accident in 1931, Wright left behind the manuscript of a very large novel, along with various background and ancillary matter associated with the book. The novel, Islandia, was edited for publication in 1942 by Wright’s daughter.

Wyke-Smith, E[dward]. A[ugustine].* (1871–1935)

British writer and mining engineer. Wyke-Smith published eight novels, four of which were for children. Bill of the Bustingforths (1921) is, like The Marvellous Land of Snergs (1927), a delightful anti–fairy tale. Of Wyke-Smith’s adult novels, The Second Chance (1923) is science fiction, concerning an old man rejuvenated to his youth by a drug made from ape glands.

Young, Ella (1867–1956)

Irish writer and poet. Young published three volumes of stories retelling Irish folk tales, Celtic Wonder Tales (1910), The Wonder-Smith and His Son (1927), and The Tangle-Coated Horse (1929). Her Unicorn with Silver Shoes (1932) is an original children’s fantasy and probably her finest book.