What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture about the origins of fairy stories?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture about the origins and purposes of fairy stories was titled On Fairy-Stories.

Tolkien delivered the lecture as the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews in Scotland on 8 March 1939. It was later revised and published in essays about fantasy and literary criticism. The work presents Tolkien’s influential ideas about what he called fairy-stories, including their setting in a “Perilous Realm.”

The essay discusses sub-creation, the imaginative construction of a secondary world, and the functions of fantasy. Tolkien argues that fairy-stories can offer recovery, escape, and consolation. His discussion of “eucatastrophe,” a sudden joyful turn, is especially influential in studies of fantasy literature.

On Fairy-Stories is often confused with The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien’s later Beowulf lecture and essay, which is a separate work published in 1936.