"Once upon a time all literature was fantasy, set in a mythical past when magic worked, animals talked, and the gods took an active hand in earthly affairs. As the mythical past was displaced in the Western world by the historical past and novelists became increasingly preoccupied with the present, fantasy was marginalized until the late 20th century, when it enjoyed a spectacular resurgence in every stratum of the literary marketplace." "This Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature provides an invaluable guide to the current state of the field. The chronology tracks fantasy's evolution from the origins of literature until the 21st century. The introduction explains the nature of the impulse to create and shape fantasy literature, the problems in defining what it is, and the reasons for its changing historical fortunes. The dictionary includes more than 700 entries on authors, both contemporary and historical, and more than 200 entries on fantasy subgenres, key images in fantasy literature, technical terms used in fantasy criticism, and the intimately convoluted relationship between literary fantasies, scholarly fantasies, and lifestyle fantasies. The extensive bibliography ranges from general textbooks and specialized accounts of the history and scholarship of fantasy literature, through bibliographies and accounts of the fantasy literature of different nations, to individual author studies and useful websites."--Jacket.