...It is a long tale...
On Fairy-Stories is an essay written by Tolkien about the reader who enters a realm full of fairy tales. An excerpt is shown below.
The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of the traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gate should be shut and the keys be lost.
Publication history
Originally it was a lecture delivered in the University of St. Andrews, in March 1939. Tolkien had been asked to speak about Andrew Lang, a prominent author on folklore in the 19th century. Tolkien chose the topic of "fairy-stories".
In subsequent years Tolkien expanded on the lecture, and produced an essay, which first appeared in printed form in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, 1947.
In 1964, at the publication of Tree and Leaf, Tolkien took the opportunity to revise the essay, though not substantially.
In 1983, Christopher Tolkien reprinted the 1964's version in the collection of his father's essays The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays.
In 2008, Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson together edited the manuscripts of the essay, and published an expanded edition of the work, in which they commentated on the essay and traced its evolution in detail.
The 1964's version also appeared in other collections such as: The Tolkien Reader (1966, with many errors), Poems and Stories (1980), Tales from the Perilous Realm (2008).
External links
- John Garth, "Revealed: Tolkien's 1939 Lecture on Fairy-stories" 15 October 2025, Edinburgh University Press Journals, accessed 17 October 2025