Further information: Early history of fantasy

Post-Tolkien fantasy[edit]

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With the immense success of Tolkien's works many publishers began to search for a new series which could have similar mass-market appeal. For the first time publishing fantasy was looked at as a profitable business venture and fantasy novels began to replace the fiction magazines as the heart of the genre.

Lin Carter edited the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, when Ballantine pursued the fantasy market; it was so titled to avert its being filed as children's literature. The line contained mostly reprints, but also introduced some new fantasy works. The series included works of William Morris, Lord Dunsany, and George MacDonald, and other works:Hope Mirrlees's Lud-in-the-Mist, Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung books, and Evangeline Walton's The Island of the Mighty, the success of which led to the publication of the other three novels she had written in that series, and to a distinct strain of Celtic fantasy in later fantasy.^[84] Another work in this series that was influential for the Celtic fantasy subgenre was Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Rising.

Although many fantasy novels of this time proved popular, it was not until 1977's The Sword of Shannara that publishers found the sort of breakthrough success they had hoped for. The book became the first fantasy novel to appear on, and eventually top the New York Times bestseller list. As a result, the genre saw a boom in the number of titles published in the following years. Notable fantasy novels of the late 1970s and 1980s included Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane (1977) the first in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever series, John Crowley's Little, Big (1981), Raymond E. Feist's Magician (1982), Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood (1984) and Glen Cook's Black Company series.^[85] These books are notable for their attempts to break out of the Tolkienian notion of fantasy.^{[citation needed]}

Notable books of the 1990s include Robert Jordan's popular series Wheel of Time, Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series and George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (the basis of the American fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones).^[86] A Song of Ice and Fire is considered a path-breaking work which paved the work for a new kind of fantasy referred to as grimdark, which was less idealistic and more violent in nature.^[87][88]

By the early 1980s the fantasy market was much larger than that of almost all science fiction authors.^[89] The long-running series of light fantasies by Piers Anthony (Xanth) and Terry Pratchett (Discworld) regularly hit the bestseller lists from the 1980s onward. With J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, which have become the best selling book series of all time, fantasy is becoming increasingly intertwined with mainstream fiction. A process aided by the international popularity of other works such as Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle, Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. The success of several film adaptations of fantasy novels such as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia has helped further this trend.

Since the 1990s, the genre has been marked by the rise of female-centric urban fantasy, very different from Tolkien's works, as shown by the popularity of Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels and Charlaine Harris' The Southern Vampire Mysteries books.^[90]