Phantastes

Phantastes was published in 1858. It tells the story of Anodos, who, on coming of age, is examining the effects of his deceased father. To his astonishment, in doing so he sees an apparition of a fairy woman, who tells him that he has some fairy blood and conveys him to Fairy Land. In Fairy Land Anodos undergoes a long series of strange adventures and spiritual experiences. He is frequently under threat, at first from malevolent trees, and later from his own evil Shadow. At one point he discovers Pygmalion's cave and sees the form of a beautiful woman enclosed in transparent alabaster. He falls instantly in love with this woman and contrives to free her from the stone, but she flees from him. Later, he encounters the Arthurian knight Sir Percivale, who has just come off the worst of an encounter with the evil Maid of the Alder-Tree. Eventually, after many trials and hazards, Anodos encounters Sir Percivale again and becomes his squire. Together they carry out deeds of chivalry before Anodos eventually returns to the mundane world. Phantastes is now regarded as a classic of the fantasy genre and has been an important influence on later generations of fantasy writers, including such names as C. S. Lewis. Often called the first true adult fantasy novel in English, Phantastes immerses readers in a shifting, dreamlike Fairy Land where every encounter carries deeper symbolic weight-a landmark work that helped invent the modern fantasy genre. Readers who love mythic, symbol-laden fantasy in the tradition of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien will find this an essential and enchanting read. The source for this public-domain ebook is Standard Ebooks (standardebooks.org). Ebooks from other sources often have typos, inconsistent spelling, missing accent marks, and missing punctuation. Ebooks from Standard Ebooks are proofread line by line against a scan of the original printed pages, then proofread again from cover to cover. They are also formatted and typeset following a professional-grade style manual, resulting in new editions supporting state-of-the-art ereader technology: automatic hyphenation, popup footnotes, complete and consistent metadata, high-resolution and scalable vector graphics, and ereader-compatible tables of contents. All of this makes the finished ebooks accurate, functional, and beautiful, a pleasure to read. (Waking Lion Press is not affiliated with or endorsed by Standard Ebooks.)