Isegoria » Classics of Fantasy

Hobberdy Dick is obscure, even compared to other fantasy classics: Woe’s me, woe’s me! The acorn’s not yet Fallen from the tree That’s to make the cradle That’s to rock the bairn That�...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/hobberdy-dick/

The Hobbit is one of the few classics of fantasy that needs little introduction: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” — Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations What do you say about the...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/the-hobbit-2/

Before there was Tolkien, there was Lord Dunsany, John Rateliff reminds us: “I do not know where I may be when this preface is read… But it does not greatly matter where I am; my dreams are h...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/the-book-of-wonder/

Clark Ashton Smith was one of “The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales” — but he was always the least popular, if the most talented, according to John Rateliff: “In sheer daemonic strangeness...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/a-rendezvous-in-averoigne/

John Rateliff calls Kenneth Morris (1879-1937) one of the great forgotten fantasists of the twentieth century and praises his Book of the Three Dragons: “he ancients did not posit omniscience o...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/book-of-the-three-dragons/

Watership Down qualifies as one of the more unusual fantasy classics: “All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But fir...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/watership-down/

Few masterpieces have been so little read, or so deeply misunderstood, yet so influential as The Night Land, John Rateliff says: “In all literature, there are few works so sheerly remarkable, s...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/the-night-land/

John Rateliff discusses another almost-forgotten classic of fantasy, The Face in the Frost: Several centuries (or so) ago, in a country whose name doesn’t matter, there was a tall, skinny, stra...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/the-face-in-the-frost/

John Rateliff describes A Wizard of Earthsea: “hat which gives us the power to work magic sets the limits of that power. A mage can control only what is near him, what he can name exactly and w...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/a-wizard-of-earthsea/

H.P. Lovecraft has become something of a geek staple over the years for his “sanity blasting” horror stories. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, on the other hand, is a fantasy classic: Three...

https://www.isegoria.net/2012/02/the-dream-quest-of-unknown-kadath/