The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales
short stories
PublisherT. Fisher Unwin
Publication date
November 1888
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Pages346 pp

The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales is a collection of fantasy short stories by Richard Garnett, generally considered a classic in the genre. Its title notwithstanding, the collection "has nothing to do with the Norse gods—although it draws upon everything else, from Arabic legends and Chinese fairy tales to Roman history and Greek mythology."[1] The title story actually concerns the release of Prometheus, upon the ultimate eclipse of Greek paganism by Christianity, from the torture to which he was sentenced by Zeus.

Publication

The collection was first published in hardcover by

Dodd, Mead
in the United States.

Its importance in the history of fantasy literature was recognized by the inclusion of two of its tales ("The Poet of Panopolis" and "The City of Philosophers") in the anthology Discoveries in Fantasy, edited by Lin Carter and published by Ballantine Books as the forty-third volume of the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in March, 1972. Carter intended to reissue the complete collection as a volume in the series, though this hope was not realized.[1]

Contents

The original edition of the book collected sixteen tales by the author; the 1903 edition added twelve more. Stories added in the 1903 edition are indented.

Reception

Puritan intolerance".[4] In a 1932 letter to his friend Brenda Salkeld, George Orwell described reading the book as "positively a duty" and praised "The Purple Head" as "excellent".[5]

References

  1. ^ a b Lin Carter, ed. Discoveries in Fantasy, Ballantine Books, 1972, p. 61.
  2. (p. 218).
  3. . (1983)
  4. (p.389).
  5. ^ Orwell, George (1968) [1932]. "Letter to Brenda Salkeld (extract)". In Orwell, Sonia; Angus, Ian (eds.). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 1: An Age Like This 1920–1940. Penguin. pp. 125–126.

External links