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A review by paladinjane
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy by Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer
5.0
Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
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.
In any reprint anthology, I like to know the table of contents so I can decide how much overlap it has with my other collections and whether the unique portions are worth it to me. I’ve listed it below, but 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.
Table of contents:
“The Queen’s Son” by Bettina von Armin
“Hans-My-Hedgehog” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
“The Story of the Hard Nut” by E. T. A. Hoffmann
“Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving
“The Luck of the Bean-Rows” by Charles Nodier
“Transformation” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“The Nest of Nightingales” by Théophile Gautier
“The Fairytale about a Dead Body, Belonging to No One Knows Whom” by Vladimir Odoevsky
“The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” by Charles Dickens
“The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol
“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Story of Jeon Unchi” by Anonymous
“Feathertop” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Master Zacharius” by Jules Verne
“The Frost King” by Louisa May Alcott
“The Tartarus of Maids” by Herman Melville
“The Magic Mirror” by George MacDonald
“The Diamond Lens” by Fitz-James O’Brien
“Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti
“The Will-O’-the-Wisps Are in Town” by Hans Christian Andersen
“The Legend of the Pale Maiden” by Aleksis Kivi
“Looking-Glass House” by Lewis Carroll
“Furnica, or the Queen of the Ants” by Carmen Sylva
“The Story of Iván the Fool” by Leo Tolstoy
“The Goophered Grapevine” by Charles W. Chestnutt
“The Bee-Man of Orn” by Frank R. Stockton
“The Remarkable Rocket” by Oscar Wilde
“The Ensouled Violin” by H. P. Blavatsky
“The Death of Odjigh” by Marcel Schwob
“The Terrestrial Fire” by Marcel Schwob
“The Kingdom of Cards” by Rabindranath Tagore
“The Other Side” by Count Eric Stanlislaus Stenbock
“The Fulness of Life” by Edith Wharton
“Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” by Vernon Lee
“The Little Room” by Madeline Yale Wynne
“The Plattner Story” by H. G. Wells
“The Princess Baladina–Her Adventure” by Willa Cather
“The Reluctant Dragon” by Kenneth Grahame
“Iktomi Stories” by Zitkala-Ša
“Marionettes” by Louis Fréchette
“Dance of the Comets” by Paul Scheerbart
“The White People” by Arthur Machen
“Blamol” by Gustav Meyrink
“Goblins” by Louis Fréchette
“Sowbread” by Grazia Deledda
“The Angry Street: A Bad Dream” by G. K. Chesterton
“The Aunt and Amabel” by E. Nesbit
“Sacrifice” by Aleksey Remizov
“The Princess Steel” by W. E. B. Du Bois
“The Hump” by Fernán Caballero
“The Celestial Omnibus” by E. M. Forster
“The Legend of the Ice Babies” by E. Pauline Johnson
“The Last Redoubt” by William Hope Hodgson
“Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse” by L. Frank Baum
“The Plant Men” by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“Strange News from Another Star” by Hermann Hesse
“The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
“The Hoard of the Gibbelins” by Lord Dunsany
“Through the Dragon Glass” by A. Merritt
“David Blaize and the Blue Door” by E. F. Benson
“The Big Bestiary of Modern Literature” by Franz Blei
“The Alligator War” by Horatio Quiroga
“Friend Island” by Francis Stevens
“Magic Comes to a Committee” by Stella Benson
“Gramophone of the Ages” by Yefim Zozulya
“Joiwind” by David Lindsay
“Sound in the Mountain” by Maurice Renard
“Sennin” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
“The Worm Ouroboros” by E. R. Eddison
“At the Border” by Der Nister
“The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan” by William B. Laughead
“Talkative Domovoi” by Aleksandr Grin
“The Ratcatcher” by Aleksandr Grin
“The Shadow Kingdom” by Robert E. Howard
“The Man Traveling with the Brocade Portrait” by Edogawa Ranpo
“A Visit to the Museum” by Vladimir Nabokov
“The Water Sprite’s Tale” by Karel Čapek
“The Capital of Cat Country” by Lao She
“Coyote Stories” by Mourning Dove
“Uncle Monday” by Zora Neale Hurston
“Rose-Cold, Moon Skater” by María Teresa León
“A Night of the High Season” by Bruno Schulz
“The Influence of the Sun” by Fernand Dumont
“The Town of Cats” by Hagiwara Sakutarō
“The Debutante” by Leonora Carrington
“The Jewels in the Forest” by Fritz Leiber
“Evening Primrose” by John Collier
“The Coming of the White Worm” by Clark Ashton Smith
“The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls” by Marcel Aymé
“Leaf by Niggle” by J. R. R. Tolkien
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.
In any reprint anthology, I like to know the table of contents so I can decide how much overlap it has with my other collections and whether the unique portions are worth it to me. I’ve listed it below, but 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.
Table of contents:
“The Queen’s Son” by Bettina von Armin
“Hans-My-Hedgehog” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
“The Story of the Hard Nut” by E. T. A. Hoffmann
“Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving
“The Luck of the Bean-Rows” by Charles Nodier
“Transformation” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“The Nest of Nightingales” by Théophile Gautier
“The Fairytale about a Dead Body, Belonging to No One Knows Whom” by Vladimir Odoevsky
“The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton” by Charles Dickens
“The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol
“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Story of Jeon Unchi” by Anonymous
“Feathertop” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“Master Zacharius” by Jules Verne
“The Frost King” by Louisa May Alcott
“The Tartarus of Maids” by Herman Melville
“The Magic Mirror” by George MacDonald
“The Diamond Lens” by Fitz-James O’Brien
“Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti
“The Will-O’-the-Wisps Are in Town” by Hans Christian Andersen
“The Legend of the Pale Maiden” by Aleksis Kivi
“Looking-Glass House” by Lewis Carroll
“Furnica, or the Queen of the Ants” by Carmen Sylva
“The Story of Iván the Fool” by Leo Tolstoy
“The Goophered Grapevine” by Charles W. Chestnutt
“The Bee-Man of Orn” by Frank R. Stockton
“The Remarkable Rocket” by Oscar Wilde
“The Ensouled Violin” by H. P. Blavatsky
“The Death of Odjigh” by Marcel Schwob
“The Terrestrial Fire” by Marcel Schwob
“The Kingdom of Cards” by Rabindranath Tagore
“The Other Side” by Count Eric Stanlislaus Stenbock
“The Fulness of Life” by Edith Wharton
“Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” by Vernon Lee
“The Little Room” by Madeline Yale Wynne
“The Plattner Story” by H. G. Wells
“The Princess Baladina–Her Adventure” by Willa Cather
“The Reluctant Dragon” by Kenneth Grahame
“Iktomi Stories” by Zitkala-Ša
“Marionettes” by Louis Fréchette
“Dance of the Comets” by Paul Scheerbart
“The White People” by Arthur Machen
“Blamol” by Gustav Meyrink
“Goblins” by Louis Fréchette
“Sowbread” by Grazia Deledda
“The Angry Street: A Bad Dream” by G. K. Chesterton
“The Aunt and Amabel” by E. Nesbit
“Sacrifice” by Aleksey Remizov
“The Princess Steel” by W. E. B. Du Bois
“The Hump” by Fernán Caballero
“The Celestial Omnibus” by E. M. Forster
“The Legend of the Ice Babies” by E. Pauline Johnson
“The Last Redoubt” by William Hope Hodgson
“Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse” by L. Frank Baum
“The Plant Men” by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“Strange News from Another Star” by Hermann Hesse
“The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
“The Hoard of the Gibbelins” by Lord Dunsany
“Through the Dragon Glass” by A. Merritt
“David Blaize and the Blue Door” by E. F. Benson
“The Big Bestiary of Modern Literature” by Franz Blei
“The Alligator War” by Horatio Quiroga
“Friend Island” by Francis Stevens
“Magic Comes to a Committee” by Stella Benson
“Gramophone of the Ages” by Yefim Zozulya
“Joiwind” by David Lindsay
“Sound in the Mountain” by Maurice Renard
“Sennin” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
“The Worm Ouroboros” by E. R. Eddison
“At the Border” by Der Nister
“The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan” by William B. Laughead
“Talkative Domovoi” by Aleksandr Grin
“The Ratcatcher” by Aleksandr Grin
“The Shadow Kingdom” by Robert E. Howard
“The Man Traveling with the Brocade Portrait” by Edogawa Ranpo
“A Visit to the Museum” by Vladimir Nabokov
“The Water Sprite’s Tale” by Karel Čapek
“The Capital of Cat Country” by Lao She
“Coyote Stories” by Mourning Dove
“Uncle Monday” by Zora Neale Hurston
“Rose-Cold, Moon Skater” by María Teresa León
“A Night of the High Season” by Bruno Schulz
“The Influence of the Sun” by Fernand Dumont
“The Town of Cats” by Hagiwara Sakutarō
“The Debutante” by Leonora Carrington
“The Jewels in the Forest” by Fritz Leiber
“Evening Primrose” by John Collier
“The Coming of the White Worm” by Clark Ashton Smith
“The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls” by Marcel Aymé
“Leaf by Niggle” by J. R. R. Tolkien