Are there any pre Tolkien fantasy books that I can read?
King of Elfland's Daughter is a good place to start, as well as George Macdonald. I'd say:>King of Elfland's Daughter>The Princess and the Goblin>Phantastes>Tales Before Tolkien (anthology)Haven't read it but Tolkien speaks highly of The Worm Ouroboros, too.
>>24923594Bible
PhantasmionUndine
George MacDonald
>>24923594The Worm Ouroboros, it was written in 1922 by E R Eddison, who much like Tolkien was an academic and a member of the Oxford Inklings who had translated stuff like Egil’s Saga from Old Norse. The two knew each other but seemed to have very different moral systems which comes off in how they viewed each others writing, I mean just look at the seethe in Tolkien’s letter about him>I read the works of E.R.J Eddison, long after they appeared; and I once met him. I heard him in Mr. Lewis's room in Magdalen College read aloud some parts of his own works – from the Mistress of Mistresses, as far as I remember. He did it extremely well. I read his works with great enjoyment for their sheer literary merit. My opinion of them is almost the same as that expressed by Mr. Lewis on p. 104 of the Essays presented to Charles Williams. Except that I disliked his characters (always excepting the Lord Gro) and despised what he appeared to admire more intensely than Mr. Lewis at any rate saw fit to say of himself. Eddison thought what I admire 'soft' (his word: one of complete condemnation, I gathered); I thought that, corrupted by an evil and indeed silly 'philosophy', he was coming to admire, more and more, arrogance and cruelty. Incidentally, I thought his nomenclature slipshod and often inept. In spite of all of which, I still think of him as the greatest and most convincing writer of 'invented worlds' that I have read. But he was certainly not an 'influence'
>>24923720>But he was certainly not an 'influence'Tolkien lies.
William Morris was named by Tolkien as an influence, including:>The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.I've read The Well at the World's End, The Water of the Wondrous Isles, and The Wood Beyond the World, and can recommend them all.
>>24923720The Worm Ouroboros is such an obnoxious book. You spend the entire time wondering what the title signifies, and then you realise right at the end that it's so retarded you didn't even allow yourself to consider the concept beforehand. The use of language is excellent, there are some fantastic sequences like the king summoning an eldritch fiend or the banquet where Lord Whatshisname gets drunk and runs his mouth, but you can tell in the last third of the book that Eddison had run out of steam. In addition, I lost a little bit of respect for Tolkien when I found out that he liked Lord Gro, who was, by far, the weakest and least interesting character, which is quite an achievement given that one of the "main characters" was completely absent during most of the story.
>>24923800I actually knew what the ending was beforehand, it was why I picked it up in the first place. It sounds pretentious to say, but it was that alien, pre-Christian morality that the characters displayed in the ending that made me want to read the whole thing, and coming in with that expectation I wasn’t disappointed. I thought Lord Gro was interesting, when he’s surrounded by epic heroes all the time he seems like the one person you could imagine being real, even if he is a traitorous wimp whose loyalties change whenever he sees a pretty lady. I think Eddison was honestly right in calling Tolkien a softy, because the best character is Brandoch Daha and it’s not even close
The only real answer to this is the chronicles of Conan the barbarian by Robert e. Howard.
>>24923599>PhantastesBased
>>24923594Watch this
>>24923594HP Lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath Conan
>>24924241Conan is amazing
I feel frustrated thinking about how almost everything in modern pop fantasy is filtered through the Tolkien->Dungeons and Dragons pipeline, and feel it shouldn't be so, but it's really hard to come up with other genuine sources of inspiration for the pop properties besides sprinkling in a dash of greek monsters and occasionally bolting on a flimsy addition of arabian or asian myth to the franchise.
>>24923594No they all burned inna fire. Sad innit?
Yes, but they're all utter shite
>>24923594This is supposed to be good but I haven't read it.
>>24925207How’d the sword break?
>>24923847Agreed , for me the ending is part of the charm. It departs greatly from modern stories with cyclical endings , where often there is a sense of nihilism or hopelessness, that causality can never be avoided. The fact that they actively choose for things to be this way is a fantastic departure from such depressive navel-gazing. >>24923800I suspect Tolkien loves Lord Gro because he's the only one who changes, develops, or progresses significantly. His moral progression, twisted though it is, probably appeals to his catholic sensibilities.
the best ones are pre-tolkien
I fucking love the Worm Ouroboros and Zimiamvia (also by Eddison). Zimiamvia is even more niche than the Worm, but I love everything about it. The world is beautiful, the philosophy weird, interesting, beautiful and disgusting at the same time. Depending on my mood, I love him and his works even more than Tolkien and Lord of the Rings.After him comes MacDonald, all his works are worth reading. Phantastes was the first book I've read that really touched my heart. If you decide to read Phantastes then you should read Lilith too. It is a bit weaker than Phantastes in my opinion and it took a while until I was hookee, but it was worth it.
>>24923594tito livi, ab urbe condita
>>24923594Gods of Pegana
