Does anyone have loves/recommendations for classic, pre-Tolkien fantasy? I find it difficult to read post-Tolkien stuff, not because I don't like Tolkien but because...actually, I don't know, I think it's because most of the post-Tolkien authors are either painfully derivative, or non-Christian. Does anyone else find it hard to enjoy non-Christian authors?

When I try to think of a list, I think of books like:

The Odyssey
The Saga of the Volsungs
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Le Morte D'Arthur
The Faerie Queene
The Pilgrim's Progress
Some Rider Haggard
George MacDonald's Princess books, plus Lilith
And anything by CS Lewis or Charles Williams...

There isn't a lot, once you get out of medieval Christendom!

As far a legendary works you might add the Kalevala and the Arabian Nights.

There isn't a whole lot of "Fantasy" novels as we know them pre-Hobbit (1938)
a few I've read that have many fantasy aspects would be:
Alice in Wonderland
Oz books
Peter pan
E. Nesbit novels
Edward Plunkett (Lord Dunsany)

The last on that list (Dunsany) was a influence on Tolkien and his "Book of wonder" is pretty good but not a novel just a collection of short stories.

Some other pre-hobbit fantasy would be Robert E. Howard's Conan stories I've read them and can't really recommend them but they are well written and he is the father of the Sword & Sorcery sub-genre of fantasy.

Two other authors I've been meaning to read from before the Hobbit would be William Morris and Eric Rücker Eddison. I really haven't checked them out much but I know they both wrote works of fantasy before Tolkien.

If I was you I wouldn't give up on modern fantasy Tolkien opened up a whole new way of novels and there are good post-Tolkien fantasy works. (If you can find them that is.)

Yeah, I can't much get into non-Christian fantasy. It's not that I have an aversion to it, it just tends to seem rather shallow to me, or it's only written to promote Wicca which I really can't get into.

Dracula isn't high fantasy in the same way, but it is marvelous reading. Ivanhoe is more historical, but it's very good too.

It's worth noting that the use of the term "Fantasy" to describe a genre of fiction is fairly recent, perhaps coming into general use about the time Tolkien was becoming popular. So a lot of stuff we would now call "Fantasy" was published as "science fiction" in the '20s and '30s and so on, and in the 19th century and earlier what we now call "fantasy" would have been called "romances." But, also, before the early 20th century there weren't really genre boundaries as we think of them now, so finding something that slots neatly into the "Fantasy" genre is going to be difficult.

A few of Shakespeare's plays are fantastical: Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream, arguably Macbeth ...
Lots and lots of medieval and post-medieval "romances": the Song of Roland being the best-known example.

I can't think of any more that haven't already been mentioned off the top of my head at the moment.


I've read very, very little explicitly Christian fantasy, and a fair amount of 'secular" fantasy. And while I've heard this charge before, it's never made the slightest bit of sense to me: I have never met a fantasy story or novel that promoted Wicca. (I'm sure they exist, but I've never met one.) Stories written to bash Christianity, yes, though those too are vanishingly rare. And "shallowness" is just one of several ways a story can be low-quality ... and most fiction is of lower quality than the best. While in fact, in my opinion a far smaller proportion of the fiction I've read that was labeled, advertised, or recommended to me as "Christian fantasy" has been of superior or even good quality than the proportion of "general-market fantasy" at that level.

Yes, I've read all/most the suggested books, including The Song of Roland in Dorothy Sayers's translation (I tell you, when we switched to a classical/Great Books educational model? Best day of my life). ...The King of Elfland's Daughter by Dunsany (reviewed here) was interesting, in some places glorious, and more than any other book gave me the constant feeling of being reminded of something I couldn't quite remember. I did catch a couple of the references, but no more. It was stunningly rich...and just a bit soulless.

Oh, I forgot the Kalevala! I've only read the first half of it (stupid university library only let me borrow one volume at a time) but am considering reading in ebook form for my Annual Epic this January (Previous years: the Orlando Furioso, Le Morte D'Arthur, The Faerie Queene). And I forgot to add the Divine Comedy to the list as well--I liked that much better than the Furioso.

Conan is trashy fun.

And YES--Morris! I was forgetting him! The Well at the World's End, right? Thanks for the reminder!

I do read the occasional post-Tolkien fantasy too . But I've never had a huge amount of success. I loved Jeri Massi's "Bracken" trilogy when younger. Also, ND Wilson is my favourite living author (Empire of Bones is coming out this year--can't wait!).

My objection to most of the fantasy I've read by non-Christians is just that sense of soullessness mentioned above. Actually, that bothers me across all genres, not just fantasy. On the other hand, I do read and enjoy really good authors like Terry Pratchett and Jorge Luis Borges--in moderation.

By contrast, there's often a satisfaction to reading fantasy or anything else by Christians, even when you'd never know it from the book. And again, there are books by non-Christians that satisfy. You will never hear me complain about Robert Louis Stevenson, for example, and I must recommend John C Wright's spectacular Last Guardian of/ Mists of Everness books--loved them to pieces, and he was an atheist when he wrote and published them (...now he's a Christian).

OK, so maybe I am asking the wrong question here. Let's try again.

What's some really worthwhile post-Tolkien, non-derivative, non-soulless fantasy I could be reading?

Wow that's going to be hard to fulfill all of those requirements. (and very subjective to the reader really.)

After reading this topic and looking at some of the fantasy books I've read I've come to realize how few fantasy novels I really like.
The Inkheart trilogy, Harry Potter, Watership down and a few Discworld books are the only ones I can think of that I really would say were really excellent books.

Some other fantasy I've read that are not that excellent but still a fun read would be The inheritance cycle and the Rangers apprentice.

Others that I know are very popular (christian writters) that you might look up would be Chuck Black, Bryan Davis and Jonathan Rogers

I cast my vote for Beowulf and Pilgrim's Progress.


I would also add George MacDonald's Phantastes, which C. S. Lewis said, "baptized my imagination," in other words, revealed to him that fantasy writing ought to be done from a Christian perspective.

Charles Williams is one of my favorite authors. I have read The Greater Trumps, and most of The Place of the Lion, and they are both among my favorite books.

One that I have not seen mentioned here yet is Dante's Divine Comedy (in this instance "comedy" refers to an exploit, not a joke). His religious views are wrong, of course, but you can just skip that, and his fantasy is well imagined and well described.
I got reading other things during a long bit in his ascent into heaven where most of it was his thoughts rather than fantasy, so I have not finished it yet.

Patricia McKillip isn't pre-Tolkien but her style kind of feels like it is. Her books are pretty good (I've read the Book of Atrix Wolfe by her). And yes, George Macdonald is great too.

Pre-Tolkien : "Paradise Lost" by John Milton Milton influenced Tolkien a great deal and fantasy in general It is one of the greatest books I've ever read.

Post-Tolkien : "The Liveship Traders" by Robin Hobbs. I really ike this author, I've read the whole "Assassin"' cycle and it is a very unusual and clever kind of fantasy, which does not lack spirituality I strongly recommend it !

I also recommend two Victorians which deal with the issues of good and evil : "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde and "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Stevenson.

\Not sure what non-soulless means, as they're all written by humans and all humans have souls. But my two favorites are The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson and The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss, which may be rather edgy, actually.

As for derivative, a lot of fantasy immediately after LotR became popular and around the early days of D&D were derivative, but the genre has moved far beyond that now. A lot of new books are excellent in originality and depth, from my opinion.

I've never read a book written to promote Wicca either. They tend to not be as enthusiastic about pushing their message through books as Christians are.