Review: Hadas Elber-Aviram, Fairy Tales of London: British Urban Fantasy, 1840 to the Present (2021)

Hadas Elber-Aviram, Fairy Tales of London: British Urban Fantasy, 1840 to the Present (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).

In Fairy Tales of London, Hadas Elber-Aviram traces the way in which eight British authors combine London and the fantastic in various stories. Elver-Aviram argues that the fictions of Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells, George Orwell, Mervyn Peake, Michael Moorcock, M. John Harrison, Neil Gaiman, and China Miéville form a coherent, socially engaged, literary tradition that is intimately connected to modern urbanity. Regardless of whether that argument holds water or not, her careful and often insightful readings offer interesting contributions to the body of research on the urban fantastic.

The book has a pleasantly effective structure. The introduction sets up the basic argument that British fantastic literature contains two main strands that stand in opposition to each other: Rural Fantasy, that follows a tradition of authors such as George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien; and Urban Fantasy, that encompasses, or perhaps consists entirely of, the authors analysed in this book.[1] It is followed by a chapter on Dickens’s fantastic stories, focusing on A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain (1848), and a chapter on those of H. G. Wells’s “scientific romances” which are set largely in London, including The War of the Worlds (1887), The Time Machine (1895), and When the Sleeper Wakes (1899).

Then follow three chapters on two authors each. Chapter 3 discusses Orwell (mainly 1984 [1949]) and Peake (mainly Titus Alone [1959]) and chapter 4 delves into the stories about Jerry Cornelius (mostly from the 1960s and 1970s). In chapter 5, Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1996) and Miéville’s Bas-Lag trilogy (2000–2004) constitute the focal texts. There are also two paragraphs dedicated to Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant series, and a five-page final section that functions rather as a conclusion to the entire book.

Elber-Aviram analyses the texts and authors she has selected for her study in a historical and biographical context. Her analyses do not restrict themselves to the fiction and published texts alone; original manuscripts, letters, illustrations, and other sources are included, offering alternative perspectives on the fiction and relating text to context. The critical readings are often scaffolded by the authors’ personal lives and opinions. Fairy Tales of London contain numerous illustrations, many from original manuscripts, to support her interpretations. Any scholar working with the authors or texts under discussion would find a valuable resource in the extensive lists of cited and consulted works.

And if that had been it, this book would have been a delight to review. Regrettably, however, it also has some unfortunate shortcomings. The most obvious one is the scholar’s desire to show exactly how detailed the analysis is. This book contains far more quotations than is necessary. While quoting is central to building arguments, proving points, and giving credit, it must be clear what argument is made or point is proven. Elber-Aviram quotes much more than I can see a reason for, often baffling rather than enlightening me. Why are “the Battle of Trafalgar”, “HRH Queen Elizabeth II”, and “his own face” (151) all deemed important enough to be made their own quotations, for instance? (Each quote has a note with a reference, resulting in nearly two thousand end notes for two hundred pages of text.) This multitude of quotations might serve a purpose, but as they are mostly left unexplained and uncommented, they leave me perplexed rather than persuaded.

This, however, is a minor flaw in an otherwise interesting and well-written (if occasionally lexiphanic) book. My main concerns with Elber-Aviram’s study are instead with its central term, its ideological thrust, and its main argument.

This is a book about Urban Fantasy, but not about urban fantasy. The capitalised term refers to the tradition of eight authors under discussion, and their fantastic stories set in London, because “‘urban fantasy’ has recently lost much of its critical valence” (21). But if no already proposed understanding of “urban fantasy” seems to fit the sense one wants, does it really improve critical valence by adding a new, very specialised, meaning? Why not simply go for a new term, say, “the Progressive Tradition of Fantastic London”, PTFL for short? Then “fantastic” could be the term that includes both science fiction, fantasy, and ghost stories, instead of using “fantasy” in two senses.

My second concern has to with how Rural Fantasy is set up as the foil to Urban Fantasy. The claim that there is a fantasy tradition that is escapist, reactionary, and comforting is neither new nor, perhaps, incorrect. In Fairy Tales of London, however, I felt obligated to accept that Rural Fantasy is a socially disengaged hobgoblin fighting against the righteous PTFL underdog. Since I would argue that the social engagement of Tolkien and Lewis is not absent, only different from that of the PTFL writers, I kept feeling that the book would have benefitted from a more nuanced discussion. Chapter 5 is the most egregious in this respect. Gaiman is declared an exception to the group already in the introduction because he likes Lord of the Rings (21), and Neverwhere is found wanting because “the accumulation of detail upon tantalizing detail […] invites the reader to forget the social ills of real London” (181). Miéville receives a slap on the wrist because his “belief that fantasy literature can change the world […] runs counter to the fundamental tendency of Secondary-World fantasy to resist radical change” (187). I doubt the universality of these claims (it is too easy to come up with counter-examples), and suspect that they are founded in an ideological position rather than research findings.

Finally, I am unconvinced by the argument that these eight authors form a tradition at all. In the final, concluding section in chapter 5, Elber-Aviram explains how the tradition comes into view with its most recent member, Miéville. But could not any prominent author be used to create a similar chain backwards, tracing some eight or so names back to Dickens? Because Dickens is such a monumental figure in British literature that he is difficult to avoid. The authors in the generation after him, who either followed in his footsteps or reacted against him, are legion. Elber-Aviram explores the links of one chain, but the book left me unconvinced that it is the only, or even most important, such chain. This did not detract from the interest with which I read about each separate link in the chain; but eight authors are, at the end of the day, only a small proportion of all the authors of the urban fantastic.

Fairy Tales of London is not a book about fairy tales or urban fantasy. It is not a nuanced discussion of the rural and urban strands of British fantasy. It is, however, a careful, detailed study of eight male authors and how their fantastic stories relate to London. Some of these men write urban fantasy, all of them write about cities, and all of them have contributed to the development of the fantasy, science fiction, and urban fantasy genres. Any scholar interested in these authors or these genres may, in other words, find much of value within its covers.

**Article published: July 1, 2022**

Notes

[1] The introduction promises a companion volume on female authors, perhaps in both traditions?

Biography

Dr Stefan Ekman is docent in English Literature and affiliated with the KuFo: The Research Group for Culture Studies at Karlstad University. He has published extensively on fantasy worlds and urban fantasy, including Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings (Wesleyan UP, 2013). He is currently working on a book about the social commentary in urban fantasy. His full list of publications can be found on Academia.edu.

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