J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1939 lecture On Fairy-Stories argued that fairy stories can offer recovery, escape, and consolation. He delivered the lecture as the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Tolkien presented fantasy not as an inferior form of literature but as a serious mode of imaginative creation. He discussed the “sub-creation” of coherent secondary worlds, the importance of belief within a story, and the distinctive value of fairy stories for readers.
The essay later appeared in print, including in the collection Tree and Leaf. Its ideas are often summarized through the phrase “eucatastrophe,” Tolkien’s term for a sudden joyful turn in a story. The lecture should not be confused with The Monsters and the Critics, his famous 1936 lecture on Beowulf.