Ballantine Adult Fantasy: A Reading Series

Ballantine Adult Fantasy covers for *The Last Unicorn*, *Vathek* (UK ed.), *Merlin’s Ring*, and *Lud-in-the-Mist* (UK ed.).
Courtesy of Douglas A. Anderson’s *Tolkien and Fantasy* blog (here and here).

About this Series

This is the landing page and index for my Ballantine Adult Fantasy (BAF) essay series, a lengthy quest to (re)read all of the novels published by Ballantine Books as part of their effort to court readers and create a market for fantasy in the wake of Tolkien’s mass market success in the mid-1960s. Edited by writer Lin Carter, BAF was a major canon-making project in the history of fantasy. It is widely remarked upon but rarely lingered over in fantasy scholarship.

BAF published 65 books, nearly all reprints of works decades and sometimes a century or more old, between May 1969 and April 1974. The publisher and the series editor considered these the core of the series. However, the series’s name and its famous unicorn colophon appeared first on Ballantine’s mass market reprint of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn in February 1969, and there are indications as early as 1967—namely in Ballantine’s promotional copy for their reprint of E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros—that Ballantine recognized the appeal of publishing fantasy novels like Tolkien’s. As a result, Lin Carter considered 18 books published between August 1965 and April 1969 as a “preface” to the BAF, and called them such in his book-length work theorizing and historicizing fantasy, Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy (published as the 58th book in the BAF series). After the series ended, Ballantine published two more fantasy novels in late 1974 originally intended for the series, which I’ve listed here as the “postlude” novels. By the end of the decade, Ballantine shifted its fantasy publishing to the Del Rey imprint, with which they made genre history.

I’ve detailed the cultural- and literary-historical background to BAF, how and why it came to exist, its role in the emergence of genre fantasy in the postwar period, and some of its complicated legacy in the first essay published in this series, on The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. To best understand my framing of this important book series and my goal to read it all through, in the process working my critical muscles as a critic and historian of fantasy, it’s best to start with my essay on The Last Unicorn and especially the section “Prelude: The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series.”

This essay series will take years to complete—I intend to read at least one novel a month, since I’ve got other things to do, too—and will proceed chronologically, with the single exception of The Last Unicorn, first with the preface novels and then into the main series. I will, however, skip the Tolkien books, which I’ve crossed out in the list below. Each essay will provide background on the book and author(s), a critical look at the narrative and major themes, a contextual reading of the book in the context of the genre’s history, and a discussion of how each book (mostly reprints) might be read in 1960s-1970s America.

As I say in the inaugural essay of this series: “All of this is just a beginning—who knows where it will lead, though I have my hopes, and hope, too, that I will have you as my companion.”

The Preface Novels, 1965–1969

~~The Hobbit~~ ~~by J.R.R. Tolkien (Aug. 1965)~~
~~The Fellowship of the Ring~~ ~~by J.R.R. Tolkien (Oct. 1965)~~
~~The Two Towers~~ ~~by J.R.R. Tolkien (Oct. 1965)~~
~~The Return of the King~~ ~~by J.R.R. Tolkien (Dec. 1965)~~
~~The Tolkien Reader~~ ~~by J.R.R. Tolkien (Sep. 1966)~~
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison (Apr. 1967)
Mistress of Mistresses by E.R. Eddison (Aug. 1967)
A Fish Dinner in Memison by E.R. Eddison (Feb. 1968)
~~The Road Goes Ever On~~ ~~by J.R.R. Tolkien and Donald Swann (Oct. 1968)~~
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (Oct. 1968)
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (Oct. 1968)
Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake (Oct. 1968)
A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay (Nov. 1968)
*start here* The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (Feb. 1969) *start here*
A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle (Feb. 1969)
~~Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham~~ ~~by J.R.R. Tolkien (Mar. 1969)~~
Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings by Lin Carter (Mar. 1969)
The Mezentian Gate by E.R. Eddison (Apr. 1969)

The Main Series, 1969–1974

The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt (May 1969)
The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany (June 1969)
The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris (July 1969)
The Silver Stallion by James Branch Cabell (Aug. 1969)
Lilith by George MacDonald (Sep. 1969)
Dragons, Elves, and Heroes edited by Lin Carter (Oct. 1969)
The Young Magicians edited by Lin Carter (Oct. 1969)
Figures of Earth by James Branch Cabell (Nov. 1969)
The Sorcerer’s Ship by Hannes Bok (Dec. 1969)
Land of Unreason by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp (Jan. 1970)
The High Place by James Branch Cabell (Feb. 1970)
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees (Mar. 1970)
At the Edge of the World by Lord Dunsany (Mar. 1970)
Phantastes by George MacDonald (Apr. 1970)
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft (May 1970)
Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith (June 1970)
The Shaving of Shagpat by George Meredith (July 1970)
The Island of the Mighty by Evangeline Walton (July 1970)
Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz (Aug. 1970)
The Well at the World’s End, Vol. 1 by William Morris (Aug. 1970)
The Well at the World’s End, Vol. 2 by William Morris (Sep. 1970)
Golden Cities, Far edited by Lin Carter (Oct. 1970)
Beyond the Golden Stair by Hannes Bok (Nov. 1970)
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (Jan. 1971)
The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson (Feb. 1971)
The Doom that Came to Sarnath and Other Stories by H. P. Lovecraft (Feb. 1971)
Something About Eve by James Branch Cabell (Mar. 1971)
Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant (Mar. 1971)
Hyperborea by Clark Ashton Smith (Apr. 1971)
Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley by Lord Dunsany (May 1971)
Vathek by William Beckford (June 1971)
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton (July 1971)
The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton (Aug. 1971)
The Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell (Sep. 1971)
New Worlds for Old edited by Lin Carter (Sep. 1971)
The Spawn of Cthulhu edited by Lin Carter (Oct. 1971)
Double Phoenix by Edmund Cooper and Roger Lancelyn Green (Nov. 1971)
The Water of the Wondrous Isles by William Morris (Nov. 1971)
Khaled by F. Marion Crawford (Dec. 1971)
The World’s Desire by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang (Jan. 1972)
Xiccarph by Clark Ashton Smith (Feb. 1972)
The Lost Continent by C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne (Feb. 1972)
Discoveries in Fantasy edited by Lin Carter (Mar. 1972)
Domnei: A Comedy of Woman-Worship by James Branch Cabell (Mar. 1972)
Kai Lung’s Golden Hours by Ernest Bramah (Apr. 1972)
Deryni Checkmate by Katherine Kurtz (May 1972)
Beyond the Fields We Know by Lord Dunsany (May 1972)
The Three Impostors by Arthur Machen (June 1972)
The Night Land, Vol. 1 by William Hope Hodgson (July 1972)
The Night Land, Vol. 2 by William Hope Hodgson (July 1972)
The Song of Rhiannon by Evangeline Walton (Aug. 1972)
Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy I edited by Lin Carter (Sep. 1972)
Evenor by George MacDonald (Nov. 1972)
Orlando Furioso: The Ring of Angelica, Volume 1 by Ludovico Ariosto, translated by Richard Hodgens (Jan. 1973)
The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany (Feb. 1973)
Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy II edited by Lin Carter (Mar. 1973)
The Sundering Flood by William Morris (May 1973)
Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy by Lin Carter (June 1973)
Poseidonis by Clark Ashton Smith (July 1973)
Excalibur by Sanders Anne Laubenthal (Aug. 1973)
High Deryni by Katherine Kurtz (Sep. 1973)
Hrolf Kraki’s Saga by Poul Anderson (Oct. 1973)
The People of the Mist by H. Rider Haggard (Dec. 1973)
Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat by Ernest Bramah (Feb. 1974)
Over the Hills and Far Away by Lord Dunsany (Apr. 1974)