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In his acclaimed collection Tales Before Tolkien, Douglas A. Anderson illuminated the sources, inspirations, and influences that fired J.R.R. Tolkien’s genius. Now Anderson turns his attention to Tolkien’s colleague and friend C. S. Lewis, whose influence on modern fantasy, through his beloved Narnia books, is second only to Tolkien’s own.In many ways, Lewis’s influence has been even wider than Tolkien’s. For in addition to the Narnia series, Lewis wrote groundbreaking works of science fiction, urban fantasy, and religious allegory, and he came to be regarded as among the most important Christian writers of the twentieth century. It will come as no surprise, then, that such a wide-ranging talent drew inspiration from a variety of sources. Here are twenty of the tributaries that fed Lewis’s unique talent, among them:“The Wood That Time Forgot: The Enchanted Wood,” taken from a never-before-published fantasy by Lewis’s biographer and friend, Roger Lancelyn Green, that directly inspired The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; E. Nesbit’s charming “The Aunt and Amabel,” in which a young girl enters another world by means of a wardrobe; “The Snow Queen,” by Hans Christian Andersen, featuring the abduction of a young boy by a woman as cruel as she is beautiful; and many more, including works by Charles Dickens, Kenneth Grahame, G. K. Chesterton, and George MacDonald, of whom Lewis would write, “I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master.” Full of fascinating insights into Lewis’s life and fiction, Tales Before Narnia is the kind of book that will be treasured by children and adults alike and passed down lovingly from generation to generation.
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TALES BEFORE NARNIA
THE ROOTS OF MODERN FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION
TALES BEFORE
NARNIA
THE ROOTS OF MODERN FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION Edited by DOUGLAS A. ANDERSON
D
B ALLANTINE B OOKS
•
N EW Y ORK
To the friends I’ve made in the Mythopoeic Society (www.mythsoc.org), and in memory of those no longer with us: Taum Santoski, William A. S. Sarjeant (“Antony Swithin”), Grace E. Funk, Norman Talbot, and Mary M. Stolzenbach
A Del Rey Trade Paperback Original Introduction, headnotes, compilation, and author notes © 2008 by Douglas A. Anderson All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: “The Child and the Giant” by Owen Barfield. Copyright © 1988, 1989 by Owen Barfield. Reprinted by permission of the Owen Barfield Literary Estate. “Et in Sempiternum Pereant” by Charles Williams. Copyright © 1935 by Charles Williams. Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates. “The Dragon’s Visit” by J.R.R. Tolkien. Copyright © The J.R.R. Tolkien Trust 1937, 1965, 2002. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. “The Enchanted Wood” from The Wood That Time Forgot by Roger Lancelyn Green. Copyright © 2008 by the Estate of Roger Lancelyn Green. Reprinted by permission of Scirard Lancelyn Green. “The Dream Dust Factory” by William Lindsay Gresham (Atlantic Monthly, October 1947). Copyright © 1947 by William Lindsay Gresham. Reprinted by permission of David L. Gresham and Douglas Gresham. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tales before Narnia : the roots of modern fantasy and science fiction / edited by Douglas A. Anderson. p. cm. A collection of classic fantasy tales that inspired C.S. Lewis. Includes bibliographical references. eISBN: 978-0-345-50443-2 1. F