Books that Contributed Most to the Genre?

Lilith is a fantasy novel written by Scottish writer George MacDonald and first published in 1895. Its importance was recognized in its later revival in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fifth volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in September 1969.[1]

Lilith is considered among the darkest of MacDonald's works, and among the most profound. It is a story concerning the nature of life, death, and salvation. In the story, MacDonald mentions a cosmic sleep that heals tortured souls, preceding the salvation of all. MacDonald was a Christian universalist, believing that all will eventually be saved. However, in this story, divine punishment is not taken lightly, and salvation is hard-won.

 

Stephen Donaldson and Julian May, Aladin as a story

 

C.S. Lewis, if we head towards children's literature (which Harry Potter was, at least at first). Young Adult - the "teen" market - is rather new, so I don't know if there really are many great influences on the genre when it comes to the age group, specifically.

In the loosest sense of the term 'book', can I toss a shout out to Gary Gygax? Dungeons & Dragons has a pretty powerful influence on modern fantasy, and the campaign guides are kind of books. Let's be honest, they've influenced more fantasy than a lot of the great authors ever did. Mervyn Peake might be considered a classic, but more people know what a D20 is than what Gormenghast is.

 

Glen Cook definitely deserves credit. I think he was one of the first to really explore dark, crapsack worlds, which has influenced a lot of todays writers.

 

I'm not sure whether Young Adult is new, or if it's just changed - children and teenagers used to read books that 'only' adults would these days (generically), such as Lord of the Rings or David Eddings and Fiest, etc.

These days they have light dystopian and paranormal romance that weren't as light and easy/quick to read. So... I would say times have simply changed - though my reading when I was younger was slightly different, as Australia has a fairly different market to US and UK and has only broadened with the use of the internet and buying overseas, so perhaps we only got the bigger names and the 20-year-old-YA-Dystopian never made it here.)

 

I believe the distinction of 'adolescent fiction' has been accepted by publishers since the 1920s or so. And the idea of being a 'YA' author seems very new; I've really only seen that trend emerge in the past couple of decades. Which in terms of literature is quite recent. Though many works of what were once called children's literature have been retroactively categorized as YA, so one could say it's existed all along.

As for Lovecraft, people tend to think of him as the father of horror instead of fantasy and omit him from these sorts of lists. The Sliding Scale of Science Fiction and Fantasy really does need a third, Y-axis of sorts to accommodate for horror. SF-Horror: Zombie Apocalypses, some Dystopian fiction, mad scientists, etc.; Fantasy-Horror: Lovecraft, vampires, ghosts, werewolves. The three genres are very intertwined, but for reasons beyond me, they are generally kept separate when discussing any one of them individually.

 

Certainly. I have read many fantasy stories that seem quite heavily inspired by Dune, and at least a few with a certain Ender's Game quality to them. William Gibson and his peers basically created steampunk for all that you can create such a thing, and many fantasy novels these days has at least a gear or an airship lying around. Many of fantasy's greatest writers are also science fiction writers, and a great deal of the science fiction I have personally read - and been influenced by - is by someone I knew first as a fantasy author. I absolutely adore China Mieville's Embassytown, and if you delve into the depths of the internet, you can find people arguing over whether Earthsea or TLHOD is Ursula K. LeGuin's best work. And the early science fiction - from Frankenstein to Jules Verne - is so poorly scientific by modern standards and often quite... flowery in its prose that you could argue its place in fantasy literature, as well.

 

Something by Charles de Lint, maybe?

 

The books that contributes to the fantasy novels are The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Twilight.These are the books that gives big impact whether books and films. I would say that times may changed depending on the books and films. So, in my age I should say that these 3 books contributes more.