Early fantasy

Lord Dunsany and E.R. Eddison were writing in the 1920s and then Howard, Moore, Leiber, etc were writing in the pulps through the 30s, Walton and White also wrote novels, and then Poul Anderson wrote The Broken Sword in 1954 - but was there anything in between, earlier in the 50s or mid or late 40s? Anything else in the 1920s?

The collection Tales Before Tolkien may be a good starting point, or A Short History of Fantasy (which I've not read, but I did like Mendlesohn's Rhetorics of Fantasy about the narrative techniques used in the genre).

I've just finished Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light, which was published in 1952 and seems like it might have connections to her 1931 historical with some fantasy elements The Corn King and the Spring Queen; there are of course Baum's Oz books starting in 1900 and continued by him and other authors and The Little Prince as well in children's books in the 1940s.

Others I've heard of but not read in no particular order include Hope Mirrlees' Lud-In-The-Mist, David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus (this may be more science fantasy, which is a whole other subgenre possibly of interest to you), James Branch Cabell's Jurgen and other books in the series. There's also William Morris' prose romances from the end of the 1800s, eg The Well at the End of the World.

Well, how about Tolkien, for one?

About LOTR, the Wikipedia article says: "The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's fantasy novel The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949 . . . For economic reasons The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes over the course of a year from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955."

C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia were being written and published during the same period.

A Short History of Fantasy comes with a chronological list of important fantasy works as one of its appendixes. I remember it being an interesting read.

E Nesbit published from the very late 1800s.

1. Part of the problem with that period (early 1940s) was that there was a large war going on and most of the first world was very short of paper. Also writers were participating in the war effort, which generally left them little time for writing.

That's why there was such an explosion of work in the late 1940s/early 1950s.

As part of that explosion we have Titus Groan published in 1946.

From the US side of things there was Conjure Wife was 1943, and Darker Than You Think was 1948 but based on Williamson's 1940 shorter work of the same name.

#2 Lud-In-The-Mist was earlier - 1926.

There were still the pulp fiction magazines publishing early SF and weird tales and adventure and detective stories, The Shadows circulation was high enough for it to afford to keep on publishing twice a month.

I mentioned Leiber.

William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Machen, Robert W. Chambers.

A large number of classics I think count as fantasy (if not at the time written): numerous examples from Greek mythology; Homer's story of the fall of Troy; Beowulf; many examples from Shakespeare; Milton's Paradise Lost and Thomas More's Utopia. Then we get to King Arthur, Robin Hood, Dante's Inferno, Faust, Gulliver's Travels ...

Did anyone mention The Once and Future King?

Take a look at the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series that Lin Carter edited during the 1970s, there's a chunk of early stuff there.

Don't forget George MacDonald in the 19th century with books like 'Lilith' and 'Phantastes' (both republished as Ballantine Adult), and the Hannes Bok fantasies (also reissued through Ballantine)

>5 AndreaKHost: yes, I think Nesbit is a proper forerunner

Someone gave me Lord Dunsany - 1933 Curse of the Wise Woman but its perhaps more properly occult? I didn't read it.
Lists like these sail close to genre storms.
I also didn't read Spenser's Faerie Queene which was handed to me as the "first" fantasy novel.

As a slight Aside , there was a great BBC TV version of The Phoenix and the Carpet by E Nesbit broadcast back in 1976/1977. A very magical production if you ever get the chance to see it. Annoyingly only the later BBC version from the 90s is available on DVD.

I remember the 76/77 version, didn't know it was BBC though - thanks.

There's also Evangeline Walton's retelling of the four branches of the Mabinogion.

Long discussion thread with many pre-Tolkien fantasy suggestions:
http://www.sffchronicles.com/threads/43819/

Somehow I missed this thread before.
No one mentioned Abraham Merritt, writing fantasy, SF, science fantasy, occult fiction from the late teens through the early '30s. Classic (& good) pulp like - hmm, I can't get links to work - The Moon Pool, The Face in the Abyss, and Burn Witch Burn (totally different than the movie, and better).