Origins of Fantasy

My apologies for the tardy post this week. Other things that needed to get done got in the way due to some personal things, but better late than never.

Last week I promised a list of some classic fantasy "must reads". Now, as I mentioned in a former post, the definition of classic varies. So, this list may not be what you expected. I'm going to stick to some much older titles this time around, and I'll cover newer ones in a future post. All of these texts were published before 1900. And of course, many of these weren't even considered fantasy when they were written.

Have you heard of Project Gutenberg? If so, you know what a great thing it is. If not, it's time you learned! Project Gutenberg has made many texts, ones where the copyright has expired, into free accessible e-books! If you don't have an e-reader, you can also download them to your computer and read them that way. So, when I have books listed below, if they are on Project Gutenberg, I'll have the link.

As a note, I may take a closer look at these fantasy texts in the future, for a Classic Fantasy Series: Part II.

The Odyssey by Homer
The Iliad by Homer
Aesop's Fables
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Metamorphoses of Ovid
Beowulf
The Divine Comedy by Dante
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Mabinogion
The Arabian Nights Vol.1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4
Le Mort d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory Vol. 1, Vol. 2
The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser Book 1
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Paradise Lost by John Milton
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Grimm's Fairy Tales
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Goblin Market by Christina Georgina Rossetti
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Hagard
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris
The Well at the World's End by William Morris
She by H. Rider Haggard

This is by no means an extensive list. What other texts that were published before 1900 do you think should be included? I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

Most of the list was taken from Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination by Richard Mathews.


NEXT UP: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!