A comprehensive collection of stories that are truly timeless. Compressed in an essential volume for any fan of the genre, it’s a wonderful read.

I absolutly adored this book - i have always been a huge fan of fantasy and this one ticked all my boxes. I would recomend this to all lovers of old school fantasy

This is an incredible collection of fantasy works throughout several periods in literature. This is probably the largest file I have ever received from NetGalley, so when the title says "Big Book" you can believe it.
I was impressed with the scientific approach to determining what to include in this collection. The first thing was to define "fey" which the authors were clear about stating that there is a fluidity in the definition over time. What intrigued me the most about their process was the use of what I envisioned as a mathematical chart or graph where they charted what they called "the rate of fey". This describes a work by the degree in which it involves fantasy or a fantastical element. I thought this was a clever and interesting method of looking at this genre and examining which works to include in a collection.
I also enjoyed the varied authors, many were known to me as a modest fantasy reader rather than solo-fantasy reader. What surprised me, and I appreciate that they did purposefully, was to include works that were either lesser known by well-known fantasy writers as well as surprise me with writers that I knew from other genres who had written some fantasy as well.
Most of these works are from the English originally but I appreciated the inclusion of the newly translated works from around the world as well. I love to have the opportunity to read work from a different cultural perspective. Fantasy will often give an interesting insight into these cultures that differs from other works of literature.

Highly recommend.
#BigBookofClassicFantasy #NetGalley.

This isn't a bad book, certainly if you like classical fantasy you'll like this, but to me, it just served to remind me why I prefer usually modern fantasy. It's weird and mildly unsettling, a focus on how the genre has evolved over its history. I think, to me, it's more interesting as a study in history than as a collection of stories themselves.

Also: when they say "Big Book" they mean BIG BOOK. I honestly couldn't finish the whole thing, just because it was so long and I was having a hard time getting into it.

The editors define classic fantasy to include stories written between the early 1800s and WWII. They attempt to represent the natural diversity of the genre (which they point out is far more extensive than what most readers might assume, given the conservative biases of many other anthologies), while being mindful of how many of the stories of this era have aged (for example, in regards to racism and sexism). Even where familiar authors appear, the stories the VanderMeers have chosen tend to be more obscure.

The book has a nice introduction discussing different trends and themes in fantasy through the period covered in this anthology, and each author has a short biographical piece which helps the reader understand how their work contributes to the genre. Quite frankly, this would make an excellent textbook for a literature class on classic fantasy. The introduction says that half the stories in this collection are translated works, some of which have never been translated before into English and some of which are new translations. The authors are from a total of 26 countries. While it's still a Europe-centric collection, this anthology demonstrates impressive diversity in its representation of the genre at that era.

The bad: Some stories have not aged especially well. While the editors did clearly make an effort to select stories with less sexism and racism than the rest of the genre at that time, it's still there. Your mileage may vary on how much you tolerate when you read, and if your tolerance level is zero, then this may not be the book for you. In one notable example, "The Goophered Grapevine" has the n-word littered throughout it, though I will add that it was written by an African-American author.

I think you'll find that this is definitely worth buying if you enjoy classic fantasy, due to its enormous size and how many of the works are translated for the first time into English.

Firstly, let's be clear: when the editors call this a big book, they're not kidding around. It's enormous.

"Classic" fantasy here extends from the late 18th to the mid-20th century, and the stories (and excerpts from novels) are arranged chronologically, so patterns emerge naturally as you read through. The early stories are not what we think of as short stories today; they're narrations of a series of events, and the characters are barely characters at all, just names with a couple of qualities attached. They tend not to drive the story particularly; they respond to events, but they aren't true protagonists.

By the mid-to-late 19th century, things have settled down, and writers have figured out plot and character pretty much as we know them today, though both continue to be enriched and refined over the following years. Until, that is, the early 20th century, when various experimental writers take things in new directions - directions that mostly proved unfruitful, I have to say. The modernist pieces are, to my ear, overwritten, repetitious, slow-moving and excessively descriptive at the expense of plot and character. We are back where we started in some ways: plots replaced by a series of events, characters replaced by names and vague qualities, effective protagonism largely absent.

Then comes the pulp era, and things pick up again (for my taste). The descriptions can still be a bit over-rich, but we have characters with goals driving plots to a satisfying conclusion. The characters can still be a bit thin, but they demonstrate their thoughts and feelings in action rather than reflection.

The collection ends with a Tolkien story, "Leaf by Niggle," which, like most of the better-known pieces, I'd read before, but which I very much enjoyed re-reading.

There's a mixture of very well-known classics, starting with Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," with more obscure pieces and authors, some of them originally written in other languages and here in English for, in many cases, the first time. As with other anthologies that attempt this kind of thing, I sometimes felt that the pieces had deserved their obscurity, though there were one or two gems. For example, before I'd even finished reading the excerpt from <i>Living Alone</i>, I went and downloaded the whole book from Project Gutenberg and read it before continuing with this book. The charming voice that had drawn me to it turned out to be its greatest, almost its only, strength, but I was glad to have discovered it.

I did skip a couple of stories in whole or in part. I'd read Kafka's <i>Metamorphosis</i> before, a long time ago, and had no particular desire to re-read it; and one of the stories became so tedious that I eventually skipped ahead to the next one. I considered doing this with several others, as well. Parts of the book I found a slog; see above about overwriting and deserved obscurity.

I suspect that this anthology is intended largely as a textbook, like the Norton anthologies that we had when I studied English at university. As a textbook, it provides a lot of fine material for analysis; it's deliberately wide-ranging, bringing in examples of many literary movements from multiple countries, while not neglecting the well-known English and American classics. As a straight read-through for entertainment, it's uneven, and sometimes, for my taste, not enjoyable at all. But it's certainly a monumental effort by the editors, and I commend their ambition, even if I didn't love every part of the result.

Having read and greatly enjoyed Ann & Jeff VanderMeer’s massive anthology entitled The Weird, I jumped at the chance to review another one of their tomes. This volume collects “classic fantasy” stories (and excerpts from longer books) ranging in date from the early 1800’s up until World War II when fantasy became more of a defined genre. The blend of authors includes classic fantasy/sci-fi/weird writers, classic literary legends dabbling in the fantastical, and many authors less known to the English-speaking world.

The editors’ most basic definition of fantasy is: “…any story in which an element of the unreal permeates the real world or any story that takes place within a secondary world that is identifiably not a version of ours, whether anything overtly ‘fantastical’ occurs during the story.” This allows for a wide variety of stories, very few of which fall into high fantasy, swords & sorcery, or other popular modern sub-genres.

A large number of the stories have a folklore, fairy-tale, or tall-tale feel with all the incoherencies and random digressions common to them. Quite a few are unclassifiable other than to say that they contain a fantastical element…maybe magic realism or surrealism? Some are more didactic like beast-fables or political satire that dips into the fantastical. A few I would classify solidly in the weird/horror or pulp sci-fi categories rather than fantasy, but such things are always a matter of opinion.

Overall, the editors have produced an interesting blend of the fantastical. How much you enjoy it may depend on your taste and how willing you are to give fantasy an extremely broad definition. Personally, I like a fairly coherent story even when I read fantasy, so the high number of folkloric tales, surreal stories, and small excerpts from longer books sometimes got on my nerves. However, if you’re into fantastical stories or “fantasy before there was a fantasy genre” this book is well worth your time.

I only read the intro and about twenty-odd stories and already preordered it so I can savor the rest of it in my hands. This is fantasy at its core, original and weird and more than unsettling. It showcases the history of the fantasy genre and how it's evolved throughout time. It's a great companion to their Big Book of Science Fiction. The VanderMeers know what they're doing, and they're amazing at it.

The Big Book of Classic Fantasy has something for everyone is the quintessential book of incredible short story fantasy. Including the works of Kafka, Benson, Tolkein, Sakutaro and Wells is just the tip of this glorious mountain of work. You will find extraordinary stories of fiction written from the past including a whole host of literary geniuses.

The classic fantasy collection has an incredible focus on including works of fantasy across many time frames which also has Rip Van Winkle and Poe and one in particular story by Tolstoy which I never knew that he wrote anything besides War and Peace. Having to read this as required reading when I was growing up, I never warmed to Tolstoy but after reading this short, my interest has definitely piqued.

There is really something for the whole family as the VanderMeer’s lovingly put this collection together to include Hans Christian Anderson, Frank L Baum and Charles Dickens and as stated above, this is not even the beginning of this long list of fascinating authors. This is an excellent collection and one everyone should have on their book. Reviewing such a book can be difficult as these stories should be read, thought about, cherished before moving on and I was able to do that in-between reading other books but I thoroughly enjoyed this. This is a great achievement and a wonderful book. I will definitely be buying a hardback or paperback version for my bookshelf.

It's tough to go wrong with this collection (even though I don't read a lot of fantasy). The editors are topnotch and thus most of the stories are too. A good mix of classic and little-known stories. Recommended.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

This is the type of compendium that everyone should have at home. It is HUGE. The collection covers just about everything you could think of. Some of the stories may read a little oddly to people, however often that is due to their age/translation, and it is something worth noticing and thinking about - I find it fascinating how our storytelling styles and how we translate works have changed over time.

All in all, this is a collection I would highly recommend to have in print, rather than the digital version, because it makes it so much easier to browse and dip in and out of the collection depending on your mood and purpose. A wonderful collection.

The Big Book of Classic Fantasy by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, this is indeed a BIG BOOK. When they say classic fantasy they are not referring to the kids nursery tales that are common, these are the stories told as the beginnings of warnings in certain areas. Read at your own risk.

The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, Ann and Jeff Vander Meer Ed.- As they did with the Big Book of Science Fiction, the Vander Meer's have fashioned a large volume of early classical fantasies. Not much swords and sorcery here, no Conan, no Elric, just as it states, classic fantasies of the likes of Washington Irving, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and many more. Also early fairy tales from different countries around the world add a new dimension to the classic tale. It's a really big book. No- I didn't read everything, I was more interested in the strange and obscure foreign tales I'd never heard of and some of the well-know authors works that I had missed growing up. But even cherry picking a list of these stories offers a wide range of tales and something to go back to again and again for new discovery. Recommended for the fantastic!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this book in exchange for my honest opinion. This will be available to purchase on July second.

In case it isn’t painfully obvious based on my other blog posts, I love fantasy of every kind. I was so excited to delve into this collection of stories, some that are well-known to me, and many others that I read for the first time.

And let me tell you; this selection is vast. The editors went through a ton of effort to gather a varied representation of an enormous genre. There were the usual culprits: the Bros. Grimm, Tolkein, Hans Christian Andersen. It was great to see them all gathered in one place. But what makes this book stand out are the surprising contributions: Louisa May Alcott, Tolstoy, and even Kafka made appearances.

I loved that there are stories from all over the world. It was fantastic to see the differences- and similarities- between the fantastical tales. It took me longer than I expected to finish this book, simply because there’s so much to digest and I didn’t want to rush it. This is a book to be savored, one that I would recommend owning so that you can return to it time and again.

So this is a great compendium, and one I’ll definitely buy when it’s released, but it has flaws. I appreciate the variety of stories here, most of which I had never read, but a lot of them didn’t have satisfying endings and they’re all super weird. I love that they’re weird, but some of the endings annoyed me. I think a lot of it has to do with them being translated to English. Overall, I think this is an awesome collection of classic fantasy, fairy tales and otherwise. I don’t usually like to read eBooks, so that could have had something to do with it not being a 5 star for me. I’ll have to get the print copy to be sure.

At the beginning of this ARC it says to please not quote anything until I check it against the finished book when it’s published, so that kind of limits my review. I’ll go back and add quotes from my notes after it’s published. I’ll also probably go back and add more about different stories, but I’ll have to wait for a lot of them. Most of my notes for the stories I’m leaving off need quotes to go with them.

A few notes on random stories:

The Queen’s Son by Bettina von Arnim:
Very odd story, and an interesting choice for the first story in the book. A queen is pregnant for 7 years before the king throws her out to live with the wild beasts of the forest because he thinks god is punishing her (and he hates her ugly bloated body…yes, that’s in there). She eventually gives birth, alone, in the woods, and something interesting happens. The ending is pretty anticlimactic honestly, even though I can appreciate the bizarreness of this story. Not bad, just not great either. It’s really interesting up until the very end, even though the wording is weird and detached throughout. I think part of the problem lies with the translation from German to English.

Hans-My-Hedgehog by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm:
What a strange little tale. I actually loved it, up until the very last sentence, which didn’t fit and kind of annoyed me. It backpedals on the moral of the story. Basically, the townspeople mock this guy because he doesn’t have any kids, so he makes some joke about having a hedgehog kid. But then his wife has a baby who’s born with the head of a hedgehog. This hedgehog boy is abused and neglected by his family until the day he decides to leave, atop a rooster’s back. Some odd things happen that are actually pretty interesting, and the fairy tale vibe is definitely there. There’s a moral along the lines of “catch more flies with honey” and “be kind, or else,” and there is a happy ending, but the last line just messes it up for me.

The Story of the Hard Nut by E.T.A. Hoffmann:
Apparently, this story is an excerpt from the author’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” which the ballet is based on. Bizarrely humorous story that is pretty dark. It has to do with a curse of sorts, one cast by a mouse lady (who claims to be a queen related to the human king). This curse turns the most beautiful princess baby into a hideous human with a huge deformed head and a tiny body. All of this happens due to a pretty ridiculous sausage part mishap. Yes, I mean an actual sausage part thrown by the king and queen. I liked it, but there it's not a happy story, even though the ending is supposed to make us think there might be a happy ending someday.

The Nest of Nightingales by Theophile Gautier:
Again, very anticlimactic. Two hermit cousins have otherworldly singing abilities, and they teach 3 orphan birds their way of singing after the bird parent dies while trying to compete against the girls in a singing competition. Not my cup of tea and maybe my least favorite story in the book.

The Will-o’-the-Wisps are in Town by Hans Christian Andersen:
A fairy tale about fairy tales, luck, and poetry in bottle. Oh, and a Bog Witch who tells a story within a story. It’s interesting because I can see how he might have made this as a way of describing his writer’s block. The main reason I think this story was better than most is because there’s an actual ending that makes sense, and it’s even kind of funny in a way that’s hard to describe. I hadn’t read this fairy tale by Andersen before, so that alone was exciting. I love his stuff.

Looking-Glass House (Excerpt from Through the Looking-Glass) by Lewis Carroll:
I can’t help but love Lewis Carroll. The Big Book of Classic Fantasy calls his writing style “nonsense literature,” which I love. This story is the first chapter from his second book, and I’m sure you’ll be familiar with it.

The Goophered Grapevine by Charles W. Chestnutt:
I read this story in college actually, and reading it again I see that it holds up. It has a special writing style that includes the use of dialect writing. It’s stories within a story and it involves a plantation and a former slave, a “goophered” (cursed) vineyard, and a conjure woman who practices magic. There’s magic in the tale, but it’s not of the variety I’m used to. This is not a fairy tale, at least not to me, and it’s slower than the others, but it’s wonderfully written.

The Bee-Man of Orn by Frank R. Stockton:
Great little story with a good moral.

The Ensouled Violin by H.P. Blavatsky:
Black magic, sign me up! I really enjoyed this one, as ridiculous as it was. Darker than a lot of the other stories here.

The Fulness of Life by Edith Wharton:
Not for me. I get the sentiment, it’s lovely in its sadness and morals, but things like this usually don’t grab me. Marriage, regrets, blah blah blah.

The Plattner Story by H.G. Wells:
Very descriptive, in Wells fashion, but it’s pushing it to say that this is fantasy. A man is thrown into another dimension and meets aliens. I enjoyed it, but not my favorite.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka:
One of my all time favorites. If you haven’t read this, you are missing out on a this unnerving, dark fantasy story starring a roach person (or is it?). There’s a great hidden meaning here. I’m glad this was included in the collection of stories.

Uncle Monday by Zora Neale Hurston:
This is another story I remember from college. I like Hurston and I did enjoy this story. It’s about a mysterious hoodoo conjurer, singing stones, and magical snakes. It reads like a bogeyman legend to me, and the story itself isn’t in the style I usually like, but Hurston is a great writer.

A great collection of stories and fantasies. I"ll be recommending this one to our patrons and some friends too.

The Big Book of Classic Fantasy is the new gold standard for fantasy literary history, providing an excellent cadence of essential stories we all know and love, and often overlooked stories that are equally brilliant. I have my fair share of anthologies and this stands above the rest. Most notable are the many writers not commonly read in the West. This isn’t just a collection of stories you’ve already read, but a full compendium of imagination from all over the world. It definitely makes for a hefty volume, coming in around 800 pages, but it’s worth it.

Overall, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy is an essential guide to the early days of the genre, providing a framework for the fantasy literature boom of the later twentieth century. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to find many of these stories outside of this collection, and that makes it an important addition to any serious fantasy literature library.

Full review to be published on July 3: https://reviewsandrobots.com/2019/07/03/the-big-book-of-classic-fantasy-book-review

Every child learns to use their imagination through fairy tales. As the VanderMeer's tell the stories, the readers "see" the characters and feel, hear, and smell the stories come to life. The old stories are still the best, but there's always room for one or two more. We read these stories to our children and grandchildren and delight in their reactions. We've built many good memories with the stories in this book. Pick a few and build some for you too.