What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture on the literary value of fairy stories?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture on the literary value 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. He argued that fairy stories should not be dismissed as childish escapism. In his account, they can provide recovery, escape, and consolation, and they can present a coherent imagined world rather than merely retell folklore.

The essay later became one of Tolkien’s most influential statements about fantasy. It also introduced or developed ideas such as “sub-creation,” the act of building a secondary world with its own internal consistency. Tolkien’s discussion is often read alongside his fiction because it explains principles visible in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

The title is sometimes confused with “The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien’s important 1936 lecture on Beowulf. “A Secret Vice,” by contrast, is a later essay about Tolkien’s interest in invented languages.