Yarbro’s most impressive literary enterprise is a long series of revisionist vampire stories, which use their relatively enlightened immortal protagonists as viewpoints from which to compile sombre panoramic
chronicles of man’s (and occasionally woman’s) inhumanity to man and woman, only slightly alleviated by interludes of erotic fantasy. Those featuring the Comte de Saint-Germain are Hotel Transylvania (1978), The Palace (1978), Blood Games (1980), Path of the Eclipse (1981), Tempting Fate (1982), The Saint-Germain Chronicles (1983; exp. as The Vampire Stories of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, 1994), Out of the House of Life (1990), Darker Jewels (1993), Better in the Dark (1993), Mansions of Darkness (1996), Writ in Blood (1997), Blood Roses (1998), Communion Blood (1999), Come Twilight (2000), A Feast in Exile (2001), Night Blooming (2002), Midnight Harvest (2003), and Dark of the Sun (2004). A spin-off series featuring Atta Olivia Clemens comprises A Flame in Byzantium (1987), Crusader’s Torch (1988), and A Candle for D’Artagnan (1989).
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The Sisters of the Night trilogy, spun off from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, stalled after The Angry Angel (1998) and The Soul of an Angel (1999). Other horror novels (refer to HDHL) with fantasy elements include The Godforsaken (1983) and A Mortal Glamor (1985), both featuring ardent witch hunters, and a contemporary/theriomorphic fantasy, Beastnights (1989).
YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER (1865–1939). Irish poet whose deep interest in native folktales and the occult—in a spirit not dissimilar to that of German romantics in quest of the volksgeist—made him a leading figure of Celtic revivalism. He founded a Hermetic society in 1885 with the poet A.E. (George Russell) and joined the Order of the Golden
Dawn, but he was expelled from the Theosophical Society. His recycled Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) is combined with Irish Fairy Tales (1892) in Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland (1977). This work was further elaborated by Stories from Carleton (1889)—based on the work of folklorist and novelist William Carleton (1794–1869)—and Representative Irish Tales (1891). These materials resound continually in his poetry, particularly in the epic title piece of The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) and Poems (1895).
Yeats gave his folkloristic interests dramatic form in such plays as the Faustian Countess Cathleen (1892), The Celtic Twilight (1893, about a seductive fairy child), and Land of Heart’s Desire (1894). He founded an Irish National Theatre Company in 1902, which acquired the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, in the hope of keeping the flickering flame of the Celtic revival alight; fantastic material never thrived there, although he did put on a five-play series telling the story of Cuchulain (1903–38). His prose fantasies include the two novellas assembled in John Sherman and Dhoya (1891) and the story collections The Secret Rose (1897) and The Celtic Twilight (1902); the former includes a series revised in collaboration with fellow folklorist and Abbey Theatre stalwart Lady Augusta Gregory as Stories of Red Hanrahan (1905). The two collections were combined as Mythologies (1959). In “Rosa Alchemica” (1896), Yeats introduced an adept modeled on one of the Golden Dawn’s founders, who featured in the stories, essays, and plays collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) and Stories of Michael Robartes and his Friends (1932). His other occult writings include an enigmatic account of A Vision (1925).
YEP, LAURENCE (1948– ). U.S. writer in various genres, mostly for children. His fantasies include a theriomorphic fantasy (series with
444 • YOLEN, JANE
elements of Oriental fantasy) comprising Dragon of the Lost Sea (1982), Dragon Steel (1985), Dragon Cauldron (1991), and Dragon War (1992). The stories in The Rainbow People (1989) and Tongues of Jade (1991) transfigure Chinese folktales, as do The Ghost Fox (1994) and Tiger Woman (1995). In The Magic Paintbrush (2000), pictures come to life. The hero of The Tiger’s Apprentice (2003) is recruited by a tiger to protect a talisman.
YOLEN, JANE (1939– ). U.S. writer, extremely prolific producer of children’s fantasies for all age groups; Harcourt Brace introduced a young adult imprint called Jane Yolen Books under her guidance in 1990. Much of her early work was short fiction, often in a delicately lapidary vein exemplified by The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales (1973), and many of her early works were episodic in nature; the most substantial include the cautionary fantasy The Magic Three of Solatia (1974); The Transfigured Hart (1975); the poignant parable The Mermaid’s Three Wisdoms (1978); the trilogy comprising Dragon’s Blood (1982), Heart’s Blood (1984), and A Sending of Dragons (1987); the hybrid science fantasy Cards of Grief (1984); and The Stone Silenus (1984). Her strong interest in Arthurian legend, reflected in the collection Merlin’s Booke (1986), the novel The Dragon’s Boy (1990), and the anthology Camelot (1995), was further extended in the Young Merlin trilogy comprising Passager, Hobby, and Merlin (all 1997), and in Sword of the Rightful King (2003).
The Chronicles of Great Alta, comprising Sister Light, Sister Dark (1988), White Jenna (1989), and The One-Armed Queen (1998), is a heroic fantasy with messianic elements. The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988) is a timeslip fantasy about the Holocaust. Wizard’s Hal (1991) features a magician’s apprentice. Briar Rose (1992) is the longest of several transfigurations of the folktale. The Wild Hunt (1995) is based in Nordic legend. The Tartan Magic series, comprising The Wizard’s Map (1999), The Pictish Child (1999), and The Bagpiper’s Ghost (2002), are Celtic fantasies, the first featuring the famous wizard Michael Scot. In Boots and the Seven-Leaguers: A Rock and Troll Novel (2000), a young troll gets a job as a roadie. The series written in collaboration with Robert J. Harris comprising Odysseus in the Serpent Maze (2001), Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons (2002), and Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast (2003) consists of classical fantasies featuring heroes in their youth.
Yolen’s many short-story collections include Tales of Wonder (1983), Dragonfield and Other Stories (1985), Dream Weaver (1989), The Faery
YOUNG ADULT FICTION • 445
Flag (1989), the Here There Be series featuring Dragons, Unicorns, Witches, Angels and Ghosts (1993–98), Twelve Impossible Things before Breakfast (1997), and Sister Emily’s Lightship and Other Stories (2000).
She edited the Xanadu series of showcase anthologies (3 vols., 1995–97) and the transfigurative Not One Damsel in Distress (2001).
YOUNG ADULT FICTION. The rapid sophistication of children’s fantasy in the late 1950s brought several new subgenres into the field, most significantly psychological fantasies specifically adapted to the developmental phases of adolescence, as exemplified by Catherine Storr’s Marianne Dreams and William Mayne’s A Game of Dark. The effectiveness of such works in modeling teenage angst and mapping out useful processes of psychological adaptation encouraged the identification within the marketplace of a specific category of young-adult fiction, in which elaborate parables of maturation provided conceptual bridges between childhood and adulthood. The label was first introduced as a marketing ploy, attempting to free the books so designated from stigma (teenagers are notoriously determined to avoid being reckoned children), but it fooled no one; what it did accomplish, however, was to permit a considerable darkening of teenage fantasy, as well as the pioneering of children’s horror fiction by such writers as John Gordon and Robert Westall.
Heroic fantasies involving quests were rapidly and cleverly adapted to the allegorical mapping of adolescence, while timeslip romances and ghost stories also became much more common as means of facilitating the conceptual breakthroughs necessary to the acquisition of adulthood.
The marketing category ran into difficulty in the late 1980s, when many publishers came to the conclusion that teenagers much preferred reading
“adult fantasy” on image grounds, but it made a spectacular return in the wake of the commercial success of J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, when the profits of adult fantasy nosedived because of the overproduc-tion of stereotyped epic trilogies.
There was an enormous expansion of young-adult fantasy in the
1990s, greatly assisted by the fact that the young-adu
lt market was much more hospitable to innovation and variation than were formula-addicted editors of adult lines. The inspirational potential of such material is reflected in the emergence of such young adult writers as Catherine Webb, Christopher Paolini, and the French 14-year-old Flavia Bujor.
Notable writers of fantasy for young adults include Anne Bishop, Francesca Lia Block, N. M. Browne, Melvin Burgess, Louise Cooper,
446 • YOURCENAR, MARGUERITE
Pamela Dean, Diana Wynne Jones, Gwyneth Jones, Sherryl Jordan, Ann Lawrence, Louise Lawrence, Margaret Mahy, Sophie Masson, Geraldine McCaughrean, Jody Lynne Nye, Meredith Ann Pierce, Tamora Pierce, Susan Price, Celia Rees, Katherine Roberts, Jan Siegel, and Chris Wooding. Showcase anthologies of young adult fantasy include Firebirds (2003), ed. Sharyn November, and New Magics (2004), ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
YOURCENAR, MARGUERITE (1903–1987). Pseudonym of French
writer Marguerite de Crayencour, the first woman elected to the
Académie Française. The prose poems translated in Fires (1936; rev.
1968; tr. 1981) employ themes from classical myth. Oriental Tales (1938; exp. 1978; tr. 1985) is a series of Oriental fantasies. The Abyss (1968; tr. 1976) is an elaborate alchemical fantasy in which the protagonist, Zeno, combines elements of Leonardo da Vinci, Paracelsus,
Copernicus, and Giordano Bruno.
– Z –
ZAHORSKI, KENNETH J. (1939– ). U.S. scholar. In collaboration with Robert H. Boyer (1937– ), he edited the showcase anthology The Fantastic Imagination: An Anthology of High Fantasy (2 vols., 1977–78), which attempted to set the agenda for the emergent genre. Zahorski and Boyer also edited Dark Imaginings: A Collection of Gothic Fantasy (1978), which similarly sought to distinguish “high” and “low” forms, and Visions of Wonder: An Anthology of Christian Fantasy (1986). The theory of the high/low taxonomy, with a detailed breakdown of subgenres, was set out in “On Fantasy,” the introduction to Fantasy Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide (1979), which Zahorski and Boyer compiled with Marshal Tymn.
ZELAZNY, ROGER (1937–1995). U.S. writer. His early work, marketed as sf (refer to HDSFL), was almost all hybrid/science fantasy heavily impregnated with images and themes drawn from mythology. This Immortal (1966) was the first of many works dealing with godlike superhumanity; whole pantheons are transfigured in Lord of Light (1967) and Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969), while Eye of Cat makes extravagant use of Native American mythology. Jack of Shadows (1971) is a striking chimerical science fantasy set on a world that keeps the
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same face turned towards its primary; its day side is ruled by science and its dark side by magic.
Zelazny’s most elaborate fantasy project was the series comprising Nine Princes in Amber (1970), The Guns of Avalon (1972), Sign of the Unicorn (1975), The Hand of Oberon (1976), and The Courts of Chaos (1978), subsequently augmented by a sequel series comprising Trumps of Doom (1985), Blood of Amber (1986), Sign of Chaos (1987), Knight of Shadows (1989), and Prince of Chaos (1991), in which members of the strife-torn ruling family of Amber—the archetypal original of a manifold of alternative worlds set up in problematic opposition to Chaos—gradually obtain a better understanding of their existential situation and its magical privileges. The second series is more formulaic, as are his other exercises in the same vein, which include the couplet comprising Changeling (1980) and Madwand (1981), and the series collected in The Changing Land (1981) and Dilvish, the Damned (1982).
Most of his other collections include some fantasies; they are most prominent in The Last Defender of Camelot (1980; rev. 2002) and Unicorn Variations (1983). A Dark Traveling (1987) is a children’s portal fantasy.
Much of Zelazny’s late work was written in collaboration. The Black Throne (1990, with Fred Saberhagen) and The Mask of Loki (1990, with Thomas T. Thomas) are science fantasies, but a series of humorous fantasies he wrote with Robert Sheckley, comprising Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming (1991), If at Faust You Don’t Succeed (1993), and A Farce to be Reckoned With (1995), play exuberantly with familiar motifs. The metafictional A Night in the Lonesome October (1993), set in Victorian England, is similar in spirit. Jane Lindskold completed works left unfinished at his death, including Lord Demon (1999).
ZETTEL, SARAH (1966– ). U.S. writer. The Isalvalta series, comprising The Usurper’s Crown (2002), A Sorcerer’s Treason (2002), and The Firebird’s Vengeance (2004), is an offbeat historical/portal fantasy. In Camelot’s Shadow (2004; aka Camelot’s Shadow) is an Arthurian fantasy featuring Gawain.
ZINDELL, DAVID (1952– ). U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL). The Ea cycle, comprising The Lightstone (2001; in 2 vols. as The Ninth Kingdom and The Silver Sword), Lord of Lies (2003), and The Evening Star (2004) is an epic/messianic fantasy in which the hero must vanquish a fallen angel and then withstand reprisals.
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ZIPES, JACK (1937– ). U.S. scholar who has written extensively on fairy tales, especially those collected by the Brothers Grimm, whose works he retranslated in The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1987). Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk & Fairy Tales (1979) collects essays exploring the transition from folklore to literary form, analyzing its subsequent evolution as a process of bourgeois appropriation and ideological manipulation. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classic Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization (1983), the essays in Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale (1994) and Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry (1997), and When Dreams Came True: Classic Fairy Tales and their Tradition (1998) extend and elaborate the thesis. He edited The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales (2000). Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter (2001) collects essays examining the ideological downside of the commercial success of children’s fiction in the 1990s.
Zipes’s exemplary anthologies include an exhaustive study of The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood (1983; rev. 1993); a showcase of feminist variants, Don’t Bet on the Prince (1986); the national samplers Victorian Fairy Tales: The Revolt of the Fairies and Elves (1987), Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days (1989), Beauties, Beasts and Enchantments: Classic French Fairy Tales (1989), and The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm (2000); the massive compendium Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture (1991, aka The Penguin Book of Western Fairy Tales); and the collection of modern fairy tales The Outspoken Princess and the Gentle Knight (1994). He has also collated editions of fairy tales by Herman Hesse and tales from the Arabian Nights.
ZIVKOVIC, ZORAN (1948– ). Serbian writer whose work is strikingly chimerical (refer to HDSFL). Fantasy elements are very prominent in The Fourth Circle (1993; tr. 2004), in which the cast of characters includes Archimedes, Stephen Hawking, and Sherlock Holmes, and Seven Touches of Music (2001), in which music is a vehicle for divine revelation. The omnibus collection Impossible Stories (2004) includes the short fiction mosaics “Impossible Encounters” (2000), “Steps through the Mist” (2002–2003), and The Library (2002; separate pub. 2004).
Bibliography
CONTENTS
Introduction
449
General Reference Works
451
Historical Studies
452
Aesthetic and Theoretical Studies
452
Miscellaneous Anthologies and Essay Collections
455
Bibliographies
456
Thematic Studies
457
Nations and Regions
469
Studies of Individual Authors
470
Writing Guides and Manuals
495
Scholarly Fantasies
495
Journals
497
Websites
497
INTRODUCTION
Because fantasy literature is both very old and (as a labelled commercial genre) very new, its bibliography is unusually complex and fragmented.
Very few textbooks have been published as yet that endeavor to cover the entire genre as it is now conceived, although there are a great many that cover narrower subgenres such as folktales, fairy tales, apocalyptic fantasy, Arthurian literature, children’s fantasy, imaginary creatures (here listed under the heading “monsters”), and so on.
Almost all the extant books attempting to characterize fantasy as a genre have been written in English, sources in foreign languages mostly confining themselves to individual topics—especially literary extensions of indigenous myths, legends and folklore, and subgenres conceived with 449
450 • BIBLIOGRAPHY
particular reference to literatures other than English, like magic realism.
A great deal of the work done on these narrower fields and topics is ex-cellent, but the relative dearth of overview texts has tended to occlude important thematic and historical connections whose mapping has been seriously undertaken only within the last 20 years.
Two subcategories of fantastic fiction whose names have been used as commercial labels for much longer—science fiction and horror fiction—
have a much more extensive critical literature than is now covered by the generic label of “fantasy.” Both these subcategories have their own volumes in this series: my own Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature and John Clute’s Historical Dictionary of Horror Literature. Some overlap between the following bibliography and those of the companion volumes is inevitable, especially where reference books attempt to embrace more than one of these labeled genres, but many books whose central relevance has restricted their listing to one of these volumes also contain material of some relevance to the others. This is especially true of surveys of the work of individual authors whose activity extends over all three commercial genres.
The A to Z of Fantasy Literature Page 68
