On Fairy-Stories was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture and the essay later developed from it.
Tolkien delivered the lecture as the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews in Scotland on 8 March 1939. He used it to examine what fairy stories are, who they are for, and why they can have serious artistic and intellectual value.
The essay is especially important because it presents Tolkien’s ideas about fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation. It also discusses the “eucatastrophe,” Tolkien’s term for the sudden joyful turn at the end of a story. The work later appeared in print in the collection Essays Presented to Charles Williams in 1947.