Fantasy: Realms of Imagination

(Hardback)

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Description

Fantasy is an expansive genre, wrought of epics, folklore, strange worlds and forays into Horror. In this book of essays which accompanies the British Library exhibition, twenty authors have mustered to explore four key themes; Fairy and Folk Tales; Epics and Quests; Weird and Uncanny; Portals and Worlds. Within these pages, Terri Windling traces the legacy of fairy lore in fiction and Cristina Bacchilega shows how fairy tales are just one niche of the worlds diverse wonder tales; Sofia Samatar explores how writing Epic Fantasy is akin to building a new universe and Robert Maslen sets off to pinpoint the eternal significance of the quest narrative; Ann VanderMeer unpicks the appeal of the Weird Tale in global terms, and China Miville is our guide through that which does not seem weird, but is actually the wildly uncanny hiding in plain sight; Dimitra Fimi encapsulates how Fantasy takes us to infinite elsewheres and Wendy Froud brings us into the studio where The Dark Crystal and its incredible creatures were born. Featuring mindblowing illustrations and representing the gamut of Fantasy fiction from Gilgamesh to Gaiman, this new volume is a treasure trove shining with fresh insights and curiosities.

Author Bio

Tanya Kirk is Lead Curator of Printed Heritage Collections 16011900. She co-curated the British Library exhibition Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination (201415) and has edited four anthologies of haunting Christmas stories for the British Library Tales of the Weird. Matthew Sangster is Professor of Romantic Studies, Fantasy and Cultural History at Glasgow University. His book on Fantasys forms, histories and communities will be published by CUP in 2023.