"On Fairy-Stories" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the fairy-story as a literary form. It was initially written for presentation by Tolkien as the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, in 1939. It first appeared in print, with some enhancement, in 1947, in a festschrift volume, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, compiled by C. S. Lewis. Charles Williams, a friend of Lewis's, had been relocated with the Oxford University Press staff from London to Oxford during the London blitz in World War II. This allowed him to participate in gatherings of The Inklings with Lewis and Tolkien. The volume of essays was intended to be presented to Williams upon the return of the OUP staff to London with the ending of the war. However, Williams died suddenly on May 15 1945, and the book was published as a memorial volume.

On Fairy-Stories was subsequently published with Leaf by Niggle in Tree and Leaf, as well as in The Tolkien Reader, published in 1966. The length of the essay, as it appears in Tree and Leaf, is 60 pages, including about ten pages of notes.

The essay is significant because it contains Tolkien's explanation of his philosophy on fantasy and thoughts on mythopoiesis. Moreover, the essay is an early analysis of speculative fiction by one of the most important authors in the genre.

Literary context

Tolkien was among the pioneers of the genre that we would now call fantasy writing. In particular, his stories — together with those of C. S. Lewis — were among the first to establish the convention of an alternative world or universe as the setting for speculative fiction. Most early modern writing that shared elements of Tolkien's style, such as the science fiction of H.G. Wells or the Gothic romances of Mary Shelley, were set in a world that is recognizably that of the author and introduced only a single fantastic element. Tolkien departed from this, reaching back into myth and faerie to create worlds characterized by seamless integrity of design and elaborate detail. He emphasized on several occasions in his private writing that he regarded his stories about Middle-earth as part of the ancient history of our own planet.

The essay On Fairy-Stories is an attempt to explain and defend the fairy-story genre, which Tolkien names Fairy Stories, and is careful to distinguish from "traveler's tales" (such as Gulliver's Travels), science fiction (such as H.G. Wells' The Time Machine), beast tales (such as Aesop's Fables and Peter Rabbit), and dream stories (such as Alice in Wonderland). One touchstone of the authentic fairy tale is that it is presented as wholly credible. "It is at any rate essential to a genuine fairy-story, as distinct from the employment of this form for lesser or debased purposes, that it should be presented as 'true.' ...But since the fairy-story deals with 'marvels,' it cannot tolerate any frame or machinery suggesting that the whole framework in which they occur is a figment or illusion."

Tolkien observes that "an essential power of Faerie is thus the power of making immediately by the will the visions of 'fantasy.'" He defines fairy stories as not stories about fairies or other supernatural beings, but stories about the interaction between humans and those beings as representative of the numinous. Second, he emphasizes that through the use of fantasy, which he equates with fancy and imagination, the author can bring the reader to experience a world which is consistent and rational, yet utterly strange as well. He calls this “a rare achievement of Art,” and notes that it was important to him as a reader: "It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine."

Tolkien suggests that fairy stories allow the reader to review his or her own world from the "perspective" of a different world. This concept, which shares much in common with phenomenology, Tolkien calls "recovery," in the sense that one's unquestioned assumptions might be recovered and changed by an outside perspective. Second, he defends fairy stories as offering escapist pleasure to the reader. And third, Tolkien suggests that fairy stories (can) provide moral or emotional consolation, through their happy ending, which he terms a "eucatastrophe."

In conclusion and as expanded upon in an epilogue, Tolkien asserts that a truly good and representative fairy story is marked by joy: "Far more powerful and poignant is the effect [of joy] in a serious tale of Faerie. In such stories, when the sudden turn comes, we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through." Tolkien sees Christianity as partaking in and fulfilling the overarching mythological nature of the cosmos: "I would venture to say that approaching the Christian story from this perspective, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. ...and among its marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation."

Publications of essay

Notes

Further reading

• On Fairy-Stories, www.tolkien-online.com - an in-depth overview of 'On Fairy-Stories' (accessed November 2007)
• J.R.R. Tolkien on Fairy Tales, Waller Hastings, Professor of English, Northern State University (accessed November 2007) - one of several examples of summaries of the essay 'On Fairy-Stories' for university courses
• Tolkien on Fairy-Stories, forthcoming book by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson: "A new expanded edition of Tolkien's most famous, and most important essay, which defined his conception of fantasy as a literary form..." - (forthcoming, February 2008)

Selection of academic responses

• A Potion too Strong?: Challenges in Translating the Religious Significance of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings to Film, Jeffrey Mallinson, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Volume I, Spring 2002 - refers to 'On Fairy-Stories' in relation to filming 'The Lord of the Rings'
• Faith Seeking Fantasy: Tolkien on Fairy Stories, Anthony J. Kelly, Theology@McAuley, Issue 3, Banyo Edition, February 2003 - theological response to 'On Fairy-Stories'