What was the name of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture about fantasy and fairy stories?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture about fantasy and fairy stories was titled On Fairy-Stories.

Tolkien delivered it as the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews in 1939. The essay was later published in expanded form and became one of his clearest statements about the value of fantasy, fairy stories, and invented worlds.

He argued that fairy stories are not merely children’s entertainment. In his account, they can offer recovery from familiar assumptions, escape from modern confinement, and consolation through the structure he called eucatastrophe: a sudden joyous turn in a story.

The essay also distinguishes the author’s creation of a secondary world from ordinary lying. Tolkien’s ideas influenced later discussions of fantasy literature, even though the essay is not a complete theory of every kind of folklore or fairy tale. Its arguments are frequently read alongside his fiction, particularly The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.