A Best 100 Fantasy Novels list

[Randy M.]

Wow, I read 28 on the Pringle list.

My numbers might look high, but consider the overlap on the lists -- Peake, Williamson, Blish, Jackson, etc. -- and I'm a fantasy-reading piker.


Randy M.

 

[Randy M.]

Read:

Gulliver's Travels by Joanthan Swift
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Vathek by William Beckford
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan poe
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Dracula by Brom Stoker
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
Northwest Smith by Catherine L. Moore
The Circus of Dr Lao by Charles G. Finney
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
You're All Alone by Fritz Leiber
The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Black Easter and The Day After Judgement by James Blish
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Green Man by Kingsley Amis
The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber


Own with intent to read eventually:

The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis
Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh by J. Sheridan LeFanu
She by Henry Rider Haggard
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson
Black Magic by Marjorie Bowen
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison
The Haunted Woman by David Lindsay
Lady into Fox and A Man in the Zoo by David Garnett
The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany
The Trial and The Castle by Franz Kafka
Turnabout by Thorne Smith
The Night Life of the Gods by Thorne Smith
Jirel of Joiry by Catherine L. Moore
Conan the Conquerer by Robert E. Howard
To Walk the Night by William Sloane
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
Fear by L. Ron Hubbard
Land of Unreason by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp
Gormenghast and Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
Adept's Gambit by Fritz Leiber
The Well of the Unicorn by Fletcher Pratt
You're All Alone by Fritz Leiber
Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock
The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
The Pastel City by M. John Marrison
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman by Angela Carter
The Alteration by Kingsley Amis
The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
The Sending by Geoffrey Household
The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
The Businessman: A Tale of Terror by Thomas M. Disch
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
Expecting Someone Taller by Tom Holt

(I own a couple like _The Night Land_ & _Melmouth, the Wanderer_, that I'm not sure I'll ever get around to reading.)

Hmmmmm ... I think my earlier addition was off a bit.

Anyway, this just illustrates how much older material is out there for readers in even a relatively small back-water of the publishing industry like fantasy. (I recognize there's a lot of fantasy published now, but that's a relatively recent phenomenon.)

Randy M.