c1300
The White Book of Rhydderch provides the earliest written source for the substance of Celtic fantasy.
1307
13th October: Knights Templar throughout France are arrested, charged with heresy, and tortured by crown inquisitors to force confessions, providing the seeds of countless secret histories and fantasies of diabolism.
c1320
Dante’s Divine Comedy provides a key model for afterlife fantasy.
c1355
The Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville exemplifies the fantasized traveler’s tale.
c1370
The story of Gawain and the Green Knight provides a key exemplar of English Arthuriana and a significant exercise in obscure allegory.
c1375
The Red Book of Hergest adds the second foundation stone of Celtic fantasy; it includes “Peredur of Evrawc,” which recycles Chrétien’s Perceval.
c1387
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales introduces fantasy—as well as naturalism—into the nascent tradition of English literature; the tales display a clear understanding of the various functions of calculated fabulation.
Early 15th century
The first version of the chivalric fantasy Amadis of
Gaul is written, probably in Portugal; the original is lost but serially expanded versions in Spanish and French boost the novel-length version to international popularity.
xviii • CHRONOLOGY
1485
Le Morte d’Arthur, bylined Thomas Malory, refashions the massive body of Anglo-Norman Arthuriana into a continuous and more-or-less coherent prose narrative, deemphasizing its supernatural elements but providing modern fantasy with its most important taproot text and exemplar.
1492
Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World demon-
strates that not all traveler’s tales are ludicrous.
1494
Matteo Boiardo dies, leaving his epic poem Orlando Innamorato
unfinished.
1515
The lifestyle fantasist styling himself “Nostradamus” publishes his first set of quatrains, laying down a rich vintage for future scholarly fantasists.
1516
Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso picks up where Boiardo left off, taking chivalric romance to new extremes of elaboration and exoticism, spicing them with sophisticated wit.
1532
François Rabelais’s Pantagruel begins a series of parodic satires that provides a crucial exemplar for Swiftian satire and Voltairean contes philosophiques, and for lifestyle fantasists avid to adopt the guiding motto of the Abbey of Thelema (“Do As Thou Wilt”).
1550
Gianfrancesco Straparola’s Nights offers literary versions of 20
folktales, including texts of Puss-in-Boots and Beauty and the Beast.
1587
Johann Spies publishes a fantasized account of the career of an obscure German scholar, founding the genre of Faustian fantasy.
1590
Edmund Spenser publishes the first part of The Faerie Queene, allegorizing contemporary culture in the form of a fairy romance. Sir Philip Sidney performs a similar allegorical service for the myth of Arcadia.
1593
Christopher Marlowe is murdered, leaving behind The Tragical
History of Dr. Faustus, a transfiguration of Spies’s Faust Book.
c1595
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a new blueprint for English fairy literature.
1605
Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote pillories chivalric romance as a kind of folly, but concedes that if nostalgia is a mental disease there is a tragic dimension in its cure.
c1611
Shakespeare’s The Tempest produces a key model of the figure of the Enchanter—an important archetype of philosophically inclined wizards—and supplies him with an equally influential exemplary household.
CHRONOLOGY • xix
1634
Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone recycles many folktales recorded by Straparola and adds many others, including versions of Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel.
1654
Justus van den Vondel’s epic drama of the rebellion in heaven, Lucifer, is couched as a complaint against Puritanism.
1667
John Milton’s epic account of the rebellion in heaven, Paradise Lost, turns the ideological tables on Vondel.
1668
Jean de la Fontaine’s Fables recycles works by Aesop and Pilpay, supplementing them with many new examples in a more cynical and satirical vein.
1678–79
The first part of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress revives and modernizes the tradition of medieval Christian allegory.
1691
Robert Kirk writes his account of The Secret Commonwealth of
Elves, Fauns and Fairies, which languishes unpublished until 1893.
1696–98
Madame d’Aulnoy’s sophisticated satirical fairy tales found a
fanciful tradition in French literature.
1697
Charles Perrault’s collection of moralistic tales adapts folklore to the function of “civilizing” children.
1701
Antoine Galland’s translation of the adventures of Sinbad the
Sailor adds a vital new element to Madame d’Aulnoy’s brand of fantasy.
1704–16
Galland’s Thousand and One Nights provides the foundation stone of Arabian fantasy.
1707
Alain-René Lesage’s Asmodeus; or, The Devil on Two Sticks displays considerable sympathy for the eponymous devil and provides an important model for supernaturally assisted tours.
1726
Jonathan Swift’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
. . . by Lemuel Gulliver sets a crucial precedent for English satirical fantasy.
1730
The posthumous publication of tales by the exiled Count Anthony
Hamilton—who had died in 1720—provides significant exemplars for
French writers of Gallandesque satires and entertainments.
1746
Voltaire’s “The World as It Is” pioneers the tradition of fanciful contes philosophiques.
xx • CHRONOLOGY
1752
Sir Francis Dashwood establishes the Friars of St. Francis of
Wycombe (nicknamed the Hell-Fire Club by its detractors) at Medmenham Abbey, setting an important precedent for modern lifestyle fantasists.
1757
Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our
Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful considers the venturesome exercise of the imagination as a psychological necessity.
1764
James Ridley imports Gallandesque fantasy into English in Tales of the Genii, bylined Charles Morell. Horace Walpole represents the moralistic Gothic fantasy The Castle of Otranto as a translation of an Italian manuscript.
1765
Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry provides a classic compendium of English ballads.
1768
Voltaire’s “The Princess of Babylon” leavens a conte
philosophique with fantasy for entertainment’s sake.
1772
Jacques Cazotte’s The Devil in Love provides a crucial example of sympathy for a seductive devil.
1782
Johann Musäus issues the first volume of his collection of German Folktales, prompting the brothers Grimm to start their collection.
1785
Rudolf Eric Raspe’s Baron Münchhausen provides the tall story
with its literary paradigm.
1786
William Beckford’s Vathek gives Arabian fantasy a decadent twist.
1787
Charles Garnier’s collection of Imaginary Voyages is launched, providing a library of philosophically informed traveler’s tales.
; 1793
William Blake publishes the first of his “prophetic books.”
1795
Johann von Goethe publishes his Märchen, providing a key model for the “art fairy tale.”
1797
Ludwig Tieck’s “The Faithful Eckhart” transfigures material from
Musäus to create a new German hero-myth.
1798
Nathan Drake’s Literary Hours describes the “sportive” element of Gothic fiction. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner appears in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads, exemplifying the fantastic aspect of British Romanticism.
CHRONOLOGY • xxi
1799
William Godwin’s St. Leon introduces moralistic alchemical romance to the medium of the three-decker novel.
1801
M. G. Lewis’s Tales of Wonder collects ballads with a supernatural theme, adding several new compositions.
1802
Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border provides a significant supplement to Percy’s Reliques.
1803
Robert Southey’s translation of Amadis de Gaul imports chivalric romance into 19th-century Britain.
1805
Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel” consolidates the Roman-
tic image of the wizard in its depiction of Michael Scott.
1808
Goethe publishes the first part of his definitive allegorical version of Faust.
1811
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine and Ludwig Tieck’s “The Elves” provide the paradigm examples of the German art fairy tale.
1812
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm issue the first volume of their Chil-
dren’s and Household Tales, firmly establishing the notion of folktales as tales told by adults to children.
1813
Fouqué’s The Magic Ring revives the tradition of chivalric romance within the novel format. Percy Shelley’s “Queen Mab” establishes an important precedent for the 19th-century English revival of fairy art and literature.
1814
The first volume of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Tales in the Manner of Callot and Adalbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl introduce a note of sinister grotesquerie into the German art fairy tale.
1818
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein creates an important template for tales of man-made monsters.
1819
Washington Irving’s “Rip van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow” pioneer the invention of American “fakelore.” John Polidori’s
“The Vampyre” supernaturalizes Lord Byron.
1820
John Keats’s “Lamia” and “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” reintro-
duce two carefully re-eroticized classic motifs into English Romantic fantasy. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound provides a model of disguised literary satanism.
xxii • CHRONOLOGY
1822
Charles Nodier’s Trilby imagines a goblin in love with a human woman.
1824
Walter Scott’s “Wandering Willie’s Tale” renders the substance of
a fantastic ballad into prose. William Austin’s “Peter Rugg—the Missing Man” Americanizes a European folktale as an allegory of history.
1828
Thomas Keightley’s Fairy Mythology provides a Bible for the English vogue; excerpts appear in the Athenaeum, assisting John Sterling’s experiments in fantasy fiction.
1831
Honoré de Balzac’s account of The Wild Ass’s Skin provides a paradigm example of modern moralistic fantasy. Nikolai Gogol’s Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka give literary form to Russian folklore.
1832–33
Benjamin Disraeli’s “Ixion in Heaven” exemplifies the use of
classical fantasy as political allegory.
1833
James Dalton’s The Invisible Gentleman attempts to adapt humorous moralistic fantasy to the three-decker format.
1834
The diffusionist thesis of Keightley’s Tales and Popular Fictions emphasizes the contribution of recycling and transfiguration to the heritage of modern fantasy.
1835
Elias Lonnrott compiles the Kalevala, synthesizing a Finnish
“epic” from fragmentary folk songs. Hans Christian Andersen begins publishing his synthetic fairy tales.
1836
Théophile Gautier’s “Clarimonde” breaks new ground in erotic
fantasy. Gogol’s “The Nose” reinvents absurdist satire.
1837
Sara Coleridge’s Phantasmion provides a significant example of an allegorical fairy romance with elements of heroic fantasy. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Dr Heidegger’s Experiment” assists the foundation of an American tradition of fantastic contes philosophiques. Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” warns young women of the dangers of standing on their own two feet.
1838
John Sterling’s The Onyx Ring attempts to found an English tradition of experimental contes philosophiques in novel form.
1839
Captain Marryat’s account of The Phantom Ship transfigures the myth of the Flying Dutchman.
CHRONOLOGY • xxiii
1840
Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque takes up where John Sterling left off in demonstrating the breadth and versatility of the fantasy spectrum. The first series of R. H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends provides a crucial exemplar for English humorous fantasy.
1842
Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni provides a key exemplar of occult fantasy and launches a thousand lifestyle fantasies. Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” establishes a paradigm of decadent fantasy. Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” recycles a famous folktale in hectic rhyme.
1843
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol creates the tradition of moralistic Christmas fantasy. Richard Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman”
begins his development of fantasy in musical form.
1844
Dickens’s The Chimes attempts to strike a great blow for the poor but exposes the limitations of moralistic fantasy. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s account of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” aims at a softer target.
1845
Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling” gives an archetypal form to a
1846
Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” lays down a template for modern
Orphean fantasy. Edward Lear’s The Book of Nonsense takes up arms against the tyranny of “common sense.”
1848–49
Gustave Flaubert writes the first version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, working toward a modern conception of the Devil. Douglas Jerrold’s A Man Made of Money demonstrates the literary potential of literalized puns.
1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Ethan Brand” embarks upon a perverse
quest for the unpardonable sin.
1851
John Ruskin’s King of the Golden River provides the cardinal English example of an art fairy tale.
1853
Richard Wagner begins his operatic transfiguration of Nordic fan-
tasy in The Rheingold.
1854–56
Éliphas Lévi’s Dogma and Ritual of Transcendental Magic provides a handbook for modern lifestyle fantasy.
xxiv • CHRONOLOGY
1855
Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” fur-
nishes a key source of enigmatic imagery.
1856
William Morris’s account of “The Hollow Land” lays down a tem-
plate for the design and decoration of secondary worlds.
1857
Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal pioneers decadent style.
1858
Geo
rge MacDonald’s Phantastes lays down a template for didactic portal fantasy.
1859
Éliphas Lévi’s History of Magic completes his couplet of scholarly fantasies, adding theory to practice.
1860
Paul Féval’s multilayered and chimerical Knightshade demonstrates the elasticity of metafiction.
1861
Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story reclaims, with interest, what Éliphas Lévi had borrowed from Zanoni.
1862
Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” explores the symbolism of “forbidden fruit.” Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière demonstrates that real historians can fake history more skillfully and more extravagantly than mere pretenders.
1863
Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies explores the utility of phantasmagoric imagery in Christian fantasy.
1865
In response to George MacDonald’s suggestion that he too might
produce something akin to The Water Babies, Lewis Carroll prepares Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for publication, achieving something quite different.
1866
Sabine Baring-Gould’s Curious Myths of the Middle Ages provides easily accessible imaginative fuel for contemporary fantasists. Théophile Gautier’s Spirite pioneers paranormal romance. William Gilbert’s The Magic Mirror exemplifies the Victorian attitude to wish-fulfillment fantasies.
1867
Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt demonstrates the difficulty of putting fantasy on stage.
1869
Jean Ingelow’s Mopsa the Fairy exemplifies the sentimental aspects of the Victorian fascination with fairies.
1870
Frank R. Stockton’s Ting-a-Ling founds an American tradition of children’s fantasy.
CHRONOLOGY • xxv
1871
Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass takes “nonsense” to new extremes of logical effect.
1872
George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin exemplifies the darker aspects of the Victorian fascination with fairies.
1874
Gustave Flaubert publishes the revised version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, featuring a more comprehensively modernized image of the Devil.
1876
Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark gives nonsense its verse epic.
1877
Madame Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled lays the foundation for a scholarly and lifestyle fantasy of unprecedented complexity. Mrs. Molesworth’s The Cuckoo Clock refines didactic portal fantasy for children.
1878
Max Adeler’s “Mr Skinner’s Night in the Underworld” adds an