Further information: Early history of fantasy

Modern fantasy[edit]

An important factor in the development of the fantasy genre was the arrival of magazines devoted to fantasy fiction. The first such publication was the German magazine Der Orchideengarten which ran from 1919-1921.^[50] In 1923, the first English-language fantasy fiction magazine, Weird Tales, was created.^[51] Many other similar magazines eventually followed, most noticeably Unknown (AKA Unknown Worlds)^[52] and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction ^[53] The pulp magazine format was at the height of its popularity at this time and was instrumental in bringing fantasy fiction to a wide audience in both the U.S. and Britain. Such magazines also played a large role in the rise of science fiction and it was at this time the two genres began to be associated with each other.

Weird Tales published works by such authors as Robert E Howard

Several of the genre's most prominent authors began their careers in these magazines including Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and Ray Bradbury. The early works of many sword and sorcery authors such as Robert E. Howard also began at this time.^[54] By 1950, sword and sorcery had begun to find a wide audience, with the success of Howard's Conan the Barbarian, and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Howard's works, especially Conan, were to have a noteworthy, even defining, influence on the sword and sorcery subgenre.^[55] They were tales of vivid, larger-than-life action and adventure,^[56] and after the work of Tolkien, the most widely read works of fantasy.^[57] Leiber's stories were particularly noted for their uncommon realism for the time; Unknown developed this trait, with many stories in it showing credibility and realism.^[58] Like Morris and Eddison before him, Leiber continued the tradition of drawing on Northern European legend and folklore.^[59] C. L. Moore was among Howard's first imitators, with "The Black God's Kiss", in which she introduced Jirel of Joiry and the heroine protagonist to sword and sorcery.^[60] According to Gary Lachman, Helena Blavatsky had a significant influence on some of the biggest names in both fantasy and science fiction of the pulp era.^[61]

Outside the pulp magazines, several American writers used the medium of fantasy for humorous and satirical purposes, including James Branch Cabell (whose 1919 novel Jurgen became the subject of an unsuccessful prosecution for obscenity),^[62] Thorne Smith, with Topper (1926) and Turnabout (1931),^[63] and Charles G. Finney, author of The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935).^[64]

In Britain in the aftermath of World War I, a notably large number of fantasy books aimed at an adult readership were published, including Living Alone by Stella Benson,^[65] A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay,^[66] Lady into Fox by David Garnett,^[65] Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees,^[65][67] and Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner.^[65][68] E. R. Eddison, another influential writer, wrote during this era. He drew inspiration from Northern sagas, as Morris did, but his prose style was modeled more on Tudor and Elizabethan English, and his stories were filled with vigorous characters in glorious adventures.^[36] Eddison's most famous work is The Worm Ouroboros, a long heroic fantasy set on an imaginary version of the planet Mercury. His characters were often of great ability and noble, if not royal, birth. These characters have been admired for his work in making his villains, particularly, more vivid characters than Tolkien's.^[69] Others have observed that while it is popular to depict the great of the world trampling on the lower classes, his characters often treat their subjects with arrogance and insolence, and this is depicted as part of their greatness.^[70]Indeed, at the end of The Worm Ouroboros, the heroes, finding peace dull, pray for and get the revival of their enemies, so that they may go and fight them again, regardless of the casualties that such a war would have.^[71] Several of these writers (including Eddison, Lindsay, and Mirrlees) had their fantasy work republished during the 1960s and 1970s.^[65]

In 1938, with the publication of The Sword in the Stone, T. H. White introduced one of the most notable works of comic fantasy.^[72] This strain continued with such writers as L. Sprague de Camp.^[73]

Literary critics of the era began to take an interest in "fantasy" as a genre of writing, and also to argue that it was a genre worthy of serious consideration. Herbert Readdevoted a chapter of his book English Prose Style (1928) to discussing "Fantasy" as an aspect of literature, arguing it was unjustly considered suitable only for children: "The Western World does not seem to have conceived the necessity of Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups".^[33] Edward Wagenknecht also discussed fantasy elements in both children's and adult fiction in his 1946 article "The Little Prince Rides the White Deer".^[74]

Tolkien[edit]

However, it was the advent of high fantasy and, most importantly, the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which finally allowed fantasy to truly enter into the mainstream. Tolkien had published The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s; while the first was a fairy tale fantasy, the second was an epic fantasy that expanded upon the groundwork of the hobbit.^[75][76] Although Tolkien's works had been successful in Britain, it was not until the late 1960s that they finally became popular in America thanks to its burgeoning counterculture.^[77] In the early 60s there was a renewed interest in sword and sorcery, and publishers mined the pulps for older stories to reprint along with the limited amount of new material. In demand for more, Ace Books science fiction editor Donald A. Wollheim felt Tolkien's three part novel had enough elements in common with sword and sorcery that it would appeal to the readers of the latter, after which he published an unauthorized paperback edition. On its first-page blurb, it was described as "a book of sword-and-sorcery that anyone can read with delight and pleasure". But the readers of the book would extend way beyond sword and sorcery fans.^[78][79] By the end of 1968, The Lord of the Rings had sold over 3 million copies in America. Its unexpected success caused American publishers to swiftly reissue a large number of older, often obscure, fantasy novels, catapulting them to belated success.^[80]

It is difficult to overstate the impact that The Lord of the Rings had on the fantasy genre; in some respects, it swamped all the works of fantasy that had been written before it, and it unquestionably created "fantasy" as a marketing category.^[81] It created an enormous number of Tolkienesque works, using the themes found in The Lord of the Rings.^[81]

Tolkien's works also helped fantasy literature to achieve a new degree of mainstream critical acclaim. Numerous polls to identify the greatest book of the century found The Lord of the Rings selected by widely different groups.^[77]

While constructing original fantasy worlds with detailed histories, geographies and political landscapes had been a part of the genre from the time of L. Frank Baum, Tolkien's influence greatly popularized the notion. This led to a subsequent decline of such devices as dream frames to explain away the fantastical nature of the setting. This stemmed not only from his example, but from his literary criticism; his "On Fairy Stories", in which he termed such settings "secondary worlds," was a formative work of fantasy criticism.^[82]

The impact that his books, combined with the success of several other series such as C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast series^[83] and Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, helped cement the genre's popularity and gave birth to the current wave of fantasy literature.