What is the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture that became a landmark essay on fantasy?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1936 lecture on fantasy was titled On Fairy-Stories.

Tolkien first delivered “On Fairy-Stories” as the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews in Scotland in 1938, although the essay’s ideas developed from an earlier lecture delivered in 1936. The work was later published in revised form and became one of his most influential discussions of fantasy and fairy tales.

In the essay, Tolkien examines what fairy stories are, where they belong, and why readers value them. He discusses concepts including recovery, escape, and consolation, and argues that fantasy can offer a renewed view of ordinary things. He also presents the idea of the “sub-creation” of a coherent secondary world.

The title is sometimes confused with “The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien’s major 1936 lecture on Beowulf. That lecture is about Old English literature, while “On Fairy-Stories” explains principles closely connected to Tolkien’s creative work.