The Fantasy Book An Illustrated History from Dracula to Tolkien

Beyond the frontiers of reason there extends the vast, shadowy world of fantasy, where monsters lurk in the gloomy depths, vampires flit across the face of the moon, and imagination reigns supreme. Franz Rottensteiner explores the world of fantasy as it appears in the literature of the West. The dark side of the mind, that fascinating and perilous Dream State, has produced its own literature of the weird, the uncanny, and the demoniac. Since the beginning of time, storytellers have told of remote and exotic realms filled with ghosts, werewolves, ghouls, and zombies. From the clinical horrors of Edgar Allan Poe to the nightmare bureaucracy of Kafka; from Frankenstein to Alice in Wonderland; from Rider Haggard to C.S. Lewis; from the Jewish ghetto of the golem to the decayed castle of Gormenghast - The Fantasy Book presents a spectral march of figures and themes from the edge of reality, and beyond.