What was the title of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture that became the essay “On Fairy-Stories”?

J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture on fantasy was titled “On Fairy-Stories,” the same title later used for its expanded published form. He delivered it as the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St Andrews.

The essay explains Tolkien’s ideas about fairy stories, including their setting in Faërie, their relationship to imagination, and the functions he called Recovery, Escape, and Consolation. It also presents his concept of the “eucatastrophe,” a sudden joyful turn that provides hope.

“On Fairy-Stories” is often discussed alongside Tolkien’s fiction because it reveals principles behind his creative work. It is not the same lecture as “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” which Tolkien delivered in 1936 and which became a landmark work of Beowulf scholarship.