The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guin

by Brian Attebery

Brian Attebery considers eccentricities and history in the writings of, Baum, Ruskin, MacDonald, Morris, Lewis and Tolkien in a concise survey of the different definitions and characteristics of the genre of fantasy, first exploring it as a whole, then defining its influence on American folklore.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Brian Attebery is professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He edited The Norton Book of Science Fiction (1997) with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler and is the author of Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (2014) and Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), among other books. In 2019 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor of Fantasy Literature at the University of Glasgow.

Reviews

[Nick Capo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting argument about the development of a distinctly American fantasy tradition.