History of fantasy

The development of fantasy literature from mythic and folkloric traditions into a recognized genre of modern fiction, shaped by changing ideas about magic, imagination, and the supernatural.

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Mythology: A body of traditional stories explaining the world through gods, heroes, origins, and supernatural events. Ancient myth provided recurring plots and beings that later fantasy reworked.
George MacDonald: A Scottish author whose nineteenth-century novels and fairy tales influenced later fantasy writers. His imaginative romances helped establish fantasy as serious literary art.
Secondary world: An invented setting presented as a world distinct from the author’s ordinary reality. A coherent secondary world became a defining structure of much modern fantasy.
Pulp magazine: A cheaply produced periodical printed on wood-pulp paper, popular in the early twentieth century. Pulp magazines gave fantasy and related adventure fiction regular venues and audiences.
Science fiction: Fiction that uses imagined scientific or technological developments to explore possible worlds and futures. Its appeal to speculative science contrasts with fantasy’s customary use of magic or marvels.
European folklore: Traditional beliefs, customs, and stories transmitted across European communities. Its fairies, monsters, and enchanted objects became a major source for fantasy.
William Morris: An English artist, designer, and writer whose romances imagined invented medieval worlds. His prose romances helped pioneer the self-contained secondary world.
Portal fantasy: Fantasy in which characters travel from an ordinary world into a magical or invented one. The portal structure links familiar settings to traditions of wonder and transformation.
Weird Tales: An American pulp magazine founded in 1923 that published fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction. Its pages brought distinctive fantasy writers to a shared readership.
Horror fiction: Fiction designed to evoke fear or dread through threats, violence, or the supernatural. Fantasy and horror share supernatural material but usually pursue different emotional effects.