reprinted in Under the Hill and Other Essays in Prose and Verse, 1904) transfiguring the legend of Tannhäuser was left incomplete at his death; it was reprinted with a conclusion by John Glassco in 1958 (aka The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser).
BEAUCLERK, HELEN (1892–1969). British writer long resident in France whose fantasy novels transpose materials borrowed from French fantastic fiction into an English mode; the portal fantasy The Green Lacquer Pavilion (1926) is a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the Gallic fascination with the Orient. The Love of the Foolish Angel (1929) recapitulates the heretical fantasies of Anatole France. The opening sequence of The Mountain and the Tree (1936) bases an account of the changing role of women in prehistory in Frazerian scholarly fantasy.
BECK, L. ADAMS (c1862–1931). Pseudonym of British writer Eliza Louisa Moresby, whose extensive travels in the Far East allowed her to cultivate a reputation as a mystic. Her fabular tales of the Orient are collected in The Ninth Vibration and Other Stories (1922), The Perfume of the Rainbow and Other Stories (1923), and Dreams and Delights (1926). Her novels, including The Treasure of Ho (1924), the karmic romance The Way of Stars (1925), The Glory of Egypt (1926 as by Louis Moresby), the theosophical romance The House of Fulfilment (1927), and the Dion Fortune–influenced occult detective stories in The Openers of the Gate (1930), were more commercially oriented.
BECKFORD, WILLIAM (1760–1844). British writer and pioneering lifestyle fantasist who squandered his fortune remodeling the extravagantly Gothic Fonthill Abbey. He wrote his classic novel Vathek—a feverish and gleefully perverse decadent/Arabian fantasy—in French; the English translation of 1786, initially issued as An Arabian Tale, is by Samuel Henley. Three novellas that Beckford intended for interpolation in the text—one of them incomplete—were discovered belatedly and
translated by Frank Marzials for publication as The Episodes of Vathek (1912).
BELLAIRS, JOHN (1938–1991). U.S. writer. St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies (1966), which makes fun of religious excess, The Pedant and Shuffly (1968), and the humorous historical fantasy The Face in the Frost (1969) were aimed at the young adult market, but Bellairs’s subsequent works targeted a younger age range. They follow a pattern established in The Pedant and Shuffly, featuring magical contests between
BENSON, STELLA • 41
unorthodox archetypes of good and evil. A sequence featuring Lewis Barnavelt comprises The House with a Clock in Its Walls (1973), The Figure in the Shadows (1975), The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring (1976); similar series featuring Anthony Monday and Johnny Dixon are less sophisticated. Numerous works that Bellairs left unfinished when he died, including the Lewis Barnavelt stories The Ghost in the Mirror (1993), The Vengeance of the Witchfinder (1993), and The Doom of the Haunted Opera (1995), were completed by Brad Strickland, who continued the series.
BEMMANN, HANS (1922–2003). German writer whose epic bildungsroman translated as The Stone and the Flute (1983; tr. 1986) includes a good deal of invented folklore. The Broken Goddess (1990; tr.
1993) addresses such material more directly by appointing a folklorist as its protagonist in an elaborate portal fantasy with a secondary world compounded out of allegorical stereotypes.
BENÉT, STEPHEN VINCENT (1898–1943). U.S. writer best known as a poet. His most notable contributions to fantasy literature are synthetic Americana of the kind pioneered by Washington Irving, including a classic Faustian fantasy featuring a clever lawyer, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1937). The tall story “Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent” is a farcical sequel; both were reprinted in Thirteen O’Clock: Stories of Several Worlds (1937), alongside the similarly reconfigured folktale “The King of the Cats.” Tales before Midnight (1939) reprints
“Johnny Pye and the Fool-Killer” (1938), in which the figure of Death is Americanized; “O’Halloran’s Luck,” which transplants a leprechaun to the United States; and the afterlife fantasy “Doc Mellhorn and the Pearly Gates.” The Last Circle (1946) includes a few further items in the same vein.
BENSON, STELLA (1892–1933). British writer who eventually settled in China. The quasi-autobiographical Living Alone (1919) spearheaded a glut of post–World War I fantasies pleading eloquently for re-enchantment. Her shorter fantasies—all of which, except for the Oriental fantasy “Kwan-yin” (1922), are in her Collected Short Stories (1936)—include “The Awakening” (1925), an allegory of divine underachievement; “The Man Who Missed the Bus” (1928), a surreal and dark fantasy; and “Christmas Formula” (1932), also reprinted in Christmas Formula and Other Stories (1932), a satire on advertising.
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BERESFORD, ELISABETH (1926– ). British writer, mostly for children, the daughter of novelist J. D. Beresford. Her first fully fledged fantasy was the E. Nesbit–inspired intrusive fantasy Awkward Magic (1964; aka The Magic World), the first of a series continued in Traveling Magic (1965; aka The Vanishing Garden), Sea-Green Magic (1968), Vanishing Magic (1970), Dangerous Magic (1972), Invisible Magic (1974), Secret Magic (1978), Curious Magic (1980), and Strange Magic (1986). Alongside these works, Beresford began chronicling the adventures of The Wombles (1968), furry creatures inhabiting an underworld beneath Wimbledon Common who recycle the upper world’s rubbish
more or less ingeniously. Aided by a successful TV series and various merchandising exercises, the series extended for 18 more books, with five gift-book supplements. Another miniature race of desperate conser-vationists, introduced in The Tovers (1982), failed to take off in the same spectacular manner. The Happy Ghost (1979), The Ghosts of Lupus Street School (1986), and Emily and the Haunted Castle (1987) feature nonthreatening apparitions.
BERGER, THOMAS (1924– ). U.S. writer whose offbeat satirical work often strays into fantasy. Little Big Man (1964) is a marginal account of longevity, but Return of Little Big Man (1999) takes its tall story element to extremes in revealing that the protagonist faked his death (at the age of 111) before continuing his exploits. Regiment of Women (1973) is an unusually uncompromising fantasy of sexual role reversal. Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel (1978) recycles/Arthurian legends with deadpan humor. The protagonists of the wish-fulfillment stories in Granted Wishes (1984) and the novels Being Invisible (1987) and Changing the Past (1989) all fail dismally to exploit the advantages of daydream opportunities. Orrie’s Story (1990) transfigures Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Adventures of the Artificial Woman (2004) transfigures Villiers de l’Isle Adam’s The Future Eve, reversing the viewpoint.
BERNERS, LORD (Gerald Tyrwhit-Wilson) (1883–1950). British artist and writer whose eccentricity was notorious. His surreal/delusionary fantasy The Camel (1936) and his satirical and apocalyptic fantasy Count Omega (1941)—in which the last trump concludes a sym-phony—are reprinted with other items in Collected Tales and Fantasies (1998),
BESANT, SIR WALTER (1836–1901). British writer who wrote numerous books in collaboration with James Rice (1844–82), including The
BISHOP, ANNE • 43
Case of Mr. Lucraft and Other Tales (1876), whose title piece is a Faustian fantasy in which a young man leases his healthy appetite to an aged hedonist. The collection also includes some humorous/ghost stories and the nationalistic allegorical/fairy tale “Titania’s Farewell.”
Besant also collaborated with Walter Herries Pollock on the Ansteyan novella “Sir Jocelyn’s Cap” (1884–85; reprinted in Uncle Jack, etc. , 1886). His solo work includes the moralistic identity exchange story The Doubts of Dives (1889; reprinted in Verbena Camellia Stephanotis, 1892), in which a bored socialite changes places with an a poor friend.
The dual-personality novel The Ivory Gate (1892) is a psychological fantasy.
BIBLICAL FANTASY. The mythology of the Old Testament, especially the events of Genesis, are frequently transfigured in stories that do not warrant description as religious fantasy but take advantage of the stories’ familiarity; such works are often satirical. The most common variety, transfiguring the story of Adam and Eve, is a subspecies of Edenic
fantasy. Transfigurations of the story of Noah are also common; notable examples include H. G. Wells’s All Aboard for Ararat, David Garnett’s Two by Two: A Story of Survival (1963), Rosemary Harris’s The Moon in the Cloud (1968), Michele Roberts’s The Book of Mrs. Noah (1987), Jeanette Winterson’s Boating for Beginners, and Garaldine McCaughrean’s It’s Not the End of the World. The Deluge also features prominently in Shamus Frazer’s wide-ranging Blow, Blow Your Trumpets (1945) and James Morrow’s series of “Bible Stories for Adults.”
Jenny Diski’s Only Human and its sequel are similarly extensive.
Other Old Testament myths that make frequent literary appeal include the story of Job—also transfigured by Wells and Morrow—and the brief mention of the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon, which is also featured in Arabian fantasy. Examples of the latter include E. Powys Mathers’s The Queen of Sheba (1924), Helène Eliat’s’s Sheba Visits Solomon (1930 in German; tr. 1932), and Noel de Vic Beamish’s The Quest of Love (1960). Fantasies based in the New Testament are better considered as Christian fantasy, although such influential stories as those of Salome and the Wandering Jew are closely akin to Old Testament–based materials, which also resonate in Jewish fantasy. See also EROTIC FANTASY.
BISHOP, ANNE (1955– ). U.S. writer whose fantasies are deftly dark edged. They include the Black Jewels trilogy, comprising Daughter of
44 • BISHOP, K. J.
the Blood (1998), Heir to the Shadows (1999), and Queen of the Darkness (2000)—to which The Invisible Ring (2000) is a prequel—and The Tir Alainn trilogy, comprising The Pillars of the World (2001), Shadows and Light (2002), The House of Gaian (2003). The latter features a young witch doubly threatened by hunters and fairies.
BISHOP, K. J. (1972– ). Australian writer and artist. Her early work for Aurealis, including “The Art of Dying” (1997) and “The Love of Beauty” (1999), was bylined Kirsten Bishop. The conspicuous decadent elements in these stories was further exaggerated in “Maldoror Abroad” (2003) in Album Zutique and in the elaborate novel The Etched City (2003), in which two former rebels follow contrasted career paths after arriving in the archetypal city of Ashamoil.
BISHOP, MICHAEL (1945–). U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL). The 1980 title story of One Winter in Eden (1984) features a dragon in disguise who reacts fervently against the injustices of modern America, as Frankenstein’s monster does in the poignant sports fantasy Brittle Innings (1994). Who Made Stevie Crye (1984) is an elaborate metafiction in the form of a horror story. Unicorn Mountain (1988) is a striking fabular account of interdimensional pollution. The pseudonymous author of the Faustian fantasy Seven Deadly Sins (1999) is a different person.
BISSON, TERRY (1942– ). U.S. writer best known for sf (refer to HDSFL). His first two novels were the sophisticated sword and sorcery novel Wyrldmaker (1981) and the contemporary fantasy Talking Man (1986). The short stories in Bears Discover Fire (1993) are mostly fabulations that develop unlikely premises in a laconically deadpan fashion.
BLACKWOOD, ALGERNON (1869–1951). British writer, one of the foremost 20th-century writers of horror fiction (refer to HDHL). Much of his work is of fantasy interest, by virtue of its consistent employment of a quasi-animistic pantheism whose earnest metaphysical extrapolation is contained in the novels The Human Chord (1910), The Centaur (1911), Julius Le Vallon (1916), The Promise of Air (1918), The Garden of Survival (1918), and The Bright Messenger (1921), and the collections Pan’s Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories (1912) and Incredible Adventures (1914). Karma: A Reincarnation Play (1918, with Violet Pearn) is also relevant. Blackwood also wrote visionary fantasies for
BLAVATSKY, MADAME • 45
children, including Jimbo (1909), The Extra Day (1915), and The Fruit-Stoners (1934). The Education of Uncle Paul (1909) and A Prisoner in Fairyland (1913) are sentimental fantasies about childhood. The animal fantasy Dudley and Gilderoy (1929) is satirically inclined.
BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757–1827). English poet and artist, the most innovative of the British writers associated with the Romantic movement.
He developed an entire allegorical myth system in his illustrated
“prophetic books,” including America: A Prophecy (1793), The Book of Urizen (1794), Europe: A Prophecy (1794), The Song of Los (1795), The Book of Los (1795), and The Four Zoas (1797–1804), culminating in Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804–20). The tyranni-cal god-figure Urizen is opposed by the blacksmith (i.e., artist) Los, who eventually succeeds in binding him in chains. Los also binds the anarchic Orc, the son he fathered on Enitharmon—the inspiration that frequently deserts him—with tragic consequences. The example of this
constructive labor illustrates the extremes that imaginative ambition might attain. The imagery of the earlier Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) recurs commonly in modern parlance, especially that of “The Tyger” and “The Sick Rose” from the latter collection.
Blake’s remark about John Milton being “of the Devil’s party without knowing it” was raised by Percy Shelley as the banner of literary satanism. The esotericism of his work has not prevented the development of a small subgenre of Blakean fantasy, including R. Faraday Nelson’s hybrid science fantasy Blake’s Progress (1975; rev. 1985 as Time-quest), Nancy Willard’s poetry collection A Visit to William Blake’s Inn, and Michael Williams’s Arcady.
BLAMIRES, HARRY (1916– ). British theologian and literary critic. His studies with C. S. Lewis inspired the deftly ironic but carefully reverent Dantean fantasy trilogy comprising The Devil’s Hunting Grounds (1954), Cold War in Hell (1955), and Blessing Unbounded (1955), which describes Purgatory and hell in scathing detail but is content to map the road to Paradise without depicting it.
BLAVATSKY, MADAME (1831–1991). Russian-born lifestyle fantasist who became a pillar of the occult revival when she cofounded the Theosophical Society in 1875, elaborating its mythos in Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888). The latter’s secret history—especially its accounts of an elaborate prehistory featuring both Atlantis and
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Lemuria—became important source texts for writers of fiction ranging over a much wider spectrum than bona fide theosophical fantasy. Early sword and sorcery writers like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith borrowed a good deal from theosophical sources. Blavatsky drew a good deal of inspiration from Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni, which was also plundered by the scholarly fantasies of Eliphas Lévi; the intimate relationship between literary, scholarly, and lifestyle fantasies was further demonstrated by Blavatsky’s influence on W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, and many others. Her own literary fantasies are collected in Nightmare Tales (1892).
BLAYLOCK, JAMES P. (1950– ). U.S. writer. The Elfin Ship (1982; restored text as The Man in the Moon, 2002) and its sequel The Disappearing Dwarf (1983) are tongue-in-cheek quest fantasies. The Digging Leviathan (1984), Homunculus (1986), and Lord Kelvin’s Machine (1992) are science-fantasy hybrids, but the fantasy ambience that re-asserted itself in Land of Dreams (1987) became increasingly dominant in The Last Coin (1988), The Paper Grail (1991), and All the Bells on Earth (1995), whose plots revolve around talismanic objects: a coin paid in fee to Judas Iscariot, a peculiar version of the grail, and a wish-granting bluebird. The Stone Giant (1989) returned to the secondary world of The Elfin Ship. The Magic Spectacles (1991) is a portal fantasy for children. Night Relics (1994), Winter Tides (1997), and The Rainy Season (1999) tend toward horror fiction (refer to HDHL). Blaylock’s short fiction is sampled in Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories (2000) and In for a Penny (2003); two collaborations with Tim Powers appear in Powers’s collection Night Moves and Other Stories (2001), and another (alongside solo stories by both writers) is in The Devils in the Details (2003).
BLOCH, ROBERT (1917–1994). U.S. writer best known for horror fiction (refer to HDHL). His early work, heavily influenced by the Lovecraft school, includes decadent/ contes cruels, like “Black Lotus”
(19
35) and “The Mandarin’s Canaries” (1938). He went on to write a good deal of humorous fantasy; Dragons and Nightmares (1969) reprints the Damon Runyon pastiches “A Good Knight’s Work” (1942)
and “The Eager Dragon” (1943), and the Thorne Smith pastiches
“Nursemaid to Nightmares” (1942) and “Black Barter” (1943), which
had previously been combined as “Mr Margate’s Mermaid” (1955).
Other novellas in the latter vein are “The Devil with You” (1950; aka
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“Black Magic Holiday”), “Hell’s Angel” (1951), “The Miracle of
Roland Weems” (1955), and “The Big Binge” (1955; book 1971 as It’s All in Your Mind), all of which are reprinted in The Lost Bloch (3 vols., 1999–2002). A pun-laden series of tall stories from Fantastic Adven-
tures (1942–46) was sampled in Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep (1987).
BLOCK, FRANCESCA LIA (1962– ). U.S. writer. Weetzie Bat (1989) began a series of quirkily surreal/urban fantasies about a bleached-blonde punk pixie; it was continued in Witch Baby (1991), Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys (1992), Missing Angel Juan (1993), and Baby Be-Bop (1995); I Was a Teenage Fairy (1998) is a humorous fantasy in a similar vein. Ecstasia (1993) and Primavera (1994) are ornate Orphean fantasies. The Hanged Man (1994) is a dark contemporary fantasy.
Echo (2001) and Wasteland (2003) are marginal delusional fantasies.
Nymph (2000) is a collection of erotic fantasies; The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold (2000) features transfigurations.
BOK, HANNES (1914–1964). Pseudonym of U.S. illustrator and writer Wayne Woodard. His literary work was heavily influenced in manner
and style by A. Merritt, two of whose fragmentary manuscripts he expanded into the novels The Fox Woman and the Blue Pagoda (1946) and The Black Wheel (1947). His most effective work in that vein is the moralistic/portal fantasy Beyond the Golden Stair (abr. version 1948
as “The Blue Flamingo”; book 1970); the others are “Starstone World”
The A to Z of Fantasy Literature Page 14