I recently ran across the image of an old paperback I had
back in the late ‘70s and it brought back a flood of memories. It was the same edition I had owned of The Glittering Plain from the Newcastle
Forgotten Fantasy Library series, which pretty much took over the field when the Ballentine
Adult Fantasy series petered out. The
crappy blue monocolor cover and the hippy-dippy “mod” font on the inset was
unmistakable. .This got me googling around the internet to unearth some
information about the long-gone Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series of
books. I hadn’t thought about them for
decades. Those old style covers eventually were phased out for full color covers with original art with later issues.
The creators of the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library
series, Douglas Menville and Robert Reginald, were no newbies to the fantasy
genre or to publishing. They previously
had produced the magazine, Forgotten Fantasy
from October 1970 to June 1971, running to only five issues of reprints of
fantasy works. I seem to recall seeing
some copies lying about years later at used book shops, but I never picked
them up, to my loss. Little did I know, but the mod font of Forgotten Fantasy inset on the covers of the NFFL series was from the previous magazine, Forgotten Fantasy. It only took thirty something years to clear up the mystery for me! The late sixties and
throughout the seventies were a rich time for new stories, revivals of old
stories and for the world of gaming as we know it.
You’ll see some familiar faces with the NFFL series such as
William Morris, Lord Dunsany and lots of H Rider Haggard and even an appearance
of Bram Stoker. Many of these authors
had previously appeared in the Ballentine
Adult Fantasy[1] series, although those stories were not
repeated in the NFFL series. More
importantly you will find some authors not commonly mentioned in the past fifty
years such as Leslie Barringer author of the hard to find Neustrian Cycle. David Lindsay is there, but he’s not the
modern American author, but the Englishman who wrote A Voyage
to Acturus (1920), which appeared in a precursor volume of the
Ballentine Adult Fantasy Series in 1968.
As a warning to some of the younger readers of this blog,
the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series is a collection of antique books
that are primarily Anglophile or Eurocentric in scope. They were reprinted in the 1970s, much like the earlier
Ballentine Adult Fantasy series and should be treated as a snapshot of that
period. Many of the books of these
series were originally published a century or more ago, so they may not conform
to the present state of fantasy writing, which is just as well, as fantasy is
all about going out of the box and exploring “what ifs”. When we lose our ability to dream and to put those ideas out in public
we lose a large part of ourselves. When
we lose the possibility of publishing those dreams or being able to find them
at bookstores or on line, we are in a dystopia.
One may ask, why such old tales are important now? Here thirty five years later, well after the
Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library ended its run and the original stories are
sixty to a hundred fifty years old, with its books consigned to private
libraries and to quiet bookshops, these authors have something to say to us
about times past and about how people thought and read. Really, they are not fundamentally different
from us nor we from the author of Gilgamesh.
I’m not here to create new or anoint exiting cannon, just to
give new readers some ideas outside of the (present) box and let some older readers go
down memory lane for a bit with these familiar works. There’s recently been a lot of fuss about Appendix N [2]
books and the like, as well as other “must read” or “must not read” lists. There are attempts to control the narrative
of Fantasy in the present as well as quelling books from the past. Let’s keep our intellectual freedom open and
away from self-appointed gatekeepers who think that they are the only ones who
know what should be in print or on the net.
The other side of this problem is that there are those who think that
the Fantasy genre is static, like a fly in amber and only their approved cannon
is of consequence. Both sides are
wrong. 
Many of these books are out of copyright and available for
free on line through such sites as Project
Gutenberg or its sister down under Project
Gutenberg Australia, or at the Internet
Archive.org as well as through other electronic means. I found nearly all
of them online in a variety of e-formats, including audio, and for free. Did I mention free? Additionally, some of these titles can be
found as physical books at on-line book sites and at some book shops, used and for fairly reasonable
prices. Call me old fashioned, but
nothing really takes the place of holding a real book in your hands.
I have listed these works in order of their printing in the
NFFL series, with the title and author linked to a page. You can easily explore around and learn a
bit about these books and their authors.
The
Glittering Plain (1891) by William Morris, #1
NFFL, pub Sept 1973
The
Saga of Eric Brighteyes (1890) by H. Rider Haggard, #2
NFFL, pub Mar 1974
The
Food of Death: Fifty-One Tales,
(1915) by Lord
Dunsany, #3 NFFL, pub Sept 1974
The
Haunted Woman (1921) by David Lindsay,
#4 NFFL, pub Mar 1975
Aladore
(1914) by Sir Henry
Newbolt, #5 NFFL, pub Sep 1975
She
and Allan (1921) by H Rider Haggard, #6
NFFL, pub Sep 1975
Gerfalcon
(1927) by Leslie
Barringer, first book of the Neustrian Cycle, #7 NFFL, pub Mar 1976
Golden Wings
and Other Stories (1856) by William Morris, #8
NFFL, pub Mar 1976
Joris
of the Rock (1928) by Leslie Barringer, the
second book of the Neustrian Cycle, #9 NFFL, pub Sep 1976
The Wonderful Adventures
of Phra the Phoenician (1890) by Edwin Lester Arnold,
#11 NFFL, pub Apr 1977
Child
Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895) by William Morris, #12
NFFL, pub Apr 1977
Shy
Leopardess (1948) by Leslie Barringer, the
last book of the Neustrian Cycle, #13 NFFL, pub Oct 1977
Ayesha: the Return of She (1905) by H Rider Haggard, #14
NFFL, pub Oct 1977
The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed (1914) by Kenneth Morris,
#15 NFFL, pub Apr 1978
The House of the
Wolfings (1889) by William Morris, #16
NFFL, pub Apr 1978
Under
the Sunset (1881) by Bram
Stoker, #17 NFFL, pub Oct 1978
Alan Quatermain
(1887) by H Rider
Haggard, #18 NFFL, pub Oct 1978
The Roots of
the Mountains (1889) by William Morris #19
NFFL, pub Apr 1979
Nada
the Lily (1892) by H Rider Haggard, #20
NFFL, pub Apr 1979
Jaufry the
Knight and the Fair Brunissende (1856) trans by Alfred Elwes
#21, pub Oct 1979
The
Spirit of Bambatse (1906) by H Rider Haggard, #22
NFFL, Oct 1979 also titled Benith elsewhere
When Birds Fly
South (1945) by Standton A Coblentz, #23 NFFL pub, Apr 1980
Alan’s Wife
[and other tales] (1889) by H Rider Haggard, #24
NFFL pub, Oct 1980
I’ve enjoyed doing a bit of research on the Newcastle
Forgotten Fantasy Library and find that I had owned and had read about half of
the books on the list, several from the NFFL, which means I have a dozen more
books to read!
In some cases there are no simple links to the titles
available. I ask the readers to please
help and add the articles to Wikipedia if they have read the books. When you do so, let me know and I’ll update
this list with a link.
Keep on reading … CoastConFan
Footnotes
[1] I’ve
written previously about some of the books from the Ballentine Adult Fantasy
series books in other posts on my blog, eventually I’ll actually produce a post
about the BAF.
[2] The
introduction and book list to Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Master’s
Guide (1979) by Earnest
Gary Gygax, p 224 says it well: http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm
Additional Links of interest
List of Lord Dunsany books
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Lord_Dunsany
List of William Morris books http://www.morrissociety.org/morris/bibliography.html
Leslie Barringer’s three Neustrian Cycle books might still
be in copyright, if so, they are available as pay e-books online.
A great site with some of the illustrators for H Rider
Haggard’s books http://www.visualhaggard.org/illustrators
Now a little exit music please – https://youtu.be/zqfFrCUrEbY . My thanks to The Zimmers for their 2007
cover of The Who’s My
Generation, which was first released in 1965 in the UK, so it seems
appropriate.
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