 Cover of the first edition | |
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Peter Goodfellow |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Orbit Books UK;St. Martin's Press US |
Publication date | 3 April 1997 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback andpaperback),online |
| Pages | 832 pp (first edition) |
| ISBN | 978-1-85723-368-1 |
| OCLC | 37106061 |
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is a 1997 reference work coveringfantasy fiction, edited byJohn Clute andJohn Grant. As of November 2012, the full text ofThe Encyclopedia of Fantasy is available online, as a companion to the online edition ofThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.[1] Other than adding death dates, there are no plans to update the encyclopaedia.[2]
The book was well-received on publication, receiving theHugo Award,[3]World Fantasy Award,[4] andLocus Award in 1998.[5]
TheEncyclopedia was published in a format that matches the 1993 second edition ofThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It is slightly smaller in terms of content, containing 1,049 alphabetical pages, over 4,000 entries and approximately one million words, the bulk of which were written by Clute, Grant and Ashley. A laterCD-ROM edition contains numerous revisions.
TheEncyclopedia uses a similar system of categorisation toThe Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, but does not include an index of theme entries. A theme index was later included in the online addenda. One of the major differences is that there are no entries related to publishing.
Characterising the book as "an excellent and highly readable source for fantasy", the industry publicationLibrary Journal describedThe Encyclopedia of Fantasy as "the first of its kind".[6]
Rob Latham writing forJournal of the Fantastic in the Arts called it "a sprawling map of the field's major authors and texts and an extraordinary cohesive argument", "an indispensable work of reference" and "perhaps the most substantial critical analysis ever to focus on fantasy literature and art".[7]
