The Fantasy Literature of England

In this first book on English fantasy, Colin Manlove shows that for all its immense diversity, English fantasy can best be understood in terms of its strong national character rather than as an international genre. Showing its development from Beowulf to Blake, the author describes English fantasy's modern growth through the secondary world, metaphysical, emotive, comic, subversive and children's fantasy. Fantasy is often seen as being the same all over the world, but in fact it is strongly national in character, and as this book shows, nowhere more so than in England.

Colin Manlove is now a full-time writer and was formerly Reader in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh.