The Impact of The Hobbit and LOTR on Contemporary Fantasy

[Fanuidhol]

Melissa W,

I also, was unaware that Lloyd Alexander was in The Inklings.  When was he a member?  What is your source of information?  I couldn't find anything to confirm it.

Fan

[Melissa_W Moderator]

I was told a long time ago (my high school English teacher) that Lloyd Alexander was a member of the Inklings, same as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.  She could have been wrong and I've never bothered to check.  Does anyone know if there's a book or something about the Inklings?  Maybe we'll have to check Google

---

Fanuidhol wrote:

Melissa W,

I also, was unaware that Lloyd Alexander was in The Inklings.  When was he a member?  What is your source of information?  I couldn't find anything to confirm it.

Fan

---

[Melissa_W Moderator]

How does that saying go, only believe half of what you're told and nothing of what you see?  Something like that.

Because I was totally way off - my bad.

Turns out Lloyd Alexander is an American (I had always thought he was British and never cared to check) - he started at Haverford College and left to join the military during WWII.  He trained in intelligence and counterintelligence in Wales; he attended the University of Paris after the war.

Irritatingly enough, Lloyd Alexander died May 17, 2007, and is buried at Arlingtoin Cemetary in Drexel Hill, PA.  Dead serious, I do not remember a news story about this - does anyone else?

This is the Wikipedia page for Lloyd Alexander.

I shudder to think what else my English teacher told us that was incorrect.  I have no idea who she mixed Alexander up with, though.

Message Edited by pedsphleb on 02-14-2008 04:40 PM

[BarbaraN]

---

pedsphleb wrote:

I was told a long time ago (my high school English teacher) that Lloyd Alexander was a member of the Inklings, same as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. She could have been wrong and I've never bothered to check. Does anyone know if there's a book or something about the Inklings? Maybe we'll have to check Google

---

Fanuidhol wrote:

Melissa W,

I also, was unaware that Lloyd Alexander was in The Inklings. When was he a member? What is your source of information? I couldn't find anything to confirm it.

Fan

---

---

This is all I could find in Wikipedia:

The Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England, between the 1930s and the 1960s. Its most regular members (many of them academics at the University) included J.R.R. "Tollers" Tolkien, C.S. "Jack" Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R. Tolkien's son), Warren "Warnie" Lewis (C.S. Lewis's elder brother), Roger Lancelyn Green, Adam Fox, Hugo Dyson, Robert Havard, J.A.W. Bennett, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill. Other less frequent attenders at their meetings included Percy Bates, Charles Leslie Wrenn, Colin Hardie, James Dundas-Grant, John Wain, R.B. McCallum, Gervase Mathew, and C.E. Stevens. The author E. R. Eddison also met the group at the invitation of C.S. Lewis.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Greetings, TiggerBear & Company...

                                                       I must admit I may have been a bit too hasty, when I said that I thought most of the more recent works of Heroic Fantasy appeared to be "knock-offs' of Tolkien's works ( to me, at any rate )... I realize this was simply dismissing them out of hand, and I freely admit that my judgement was based solely upon my own prejudices in the matter ( as I said before, I merely glanced at these other books- I never actually read them- except for the books I read while still in my youth )...Furthermore, I was never in any position of authority to dismiss them so readily- I was only going on my "intuition" of what they appeared

to be ( to me ).

When I introduced myself to the Book Club discussions, 

 ( it was not in the Tolkien Discussion-  but in the Dickens discussion last December ) I also freely admitted that I am simply not the voracious reader that I was in my youth ( which was quite a long time ago, now )...For years, I have been too tired ( from work and chores  and other distractions ) to sit down and concentrate on a good book- I have found it so much easier to just turn on the TV ( and nowadays, put on a DVD, perhaps )..In these many years, when I have picked up a book, nine times out of ten, it has been a Mystery- for some "light" reading for my own entertainment...

I became attracted to the Tolkien Reading Group because, also in all that time, I have returned, from time to time, to Tolkien's books- as, ( if I may be allowed to wax a little emotional and sentimental here ) those books have always retained a special place in my heart...Everytime I have returned to visit Middle- Earth, it has been almost a kind of pilgrimage for me...

As I said before- I am no authority on works of Fantasy in general- It sounds like you might be more well equipped to answer Bramblerose's question ( as to whether or not there are any more Fantasy books out there equal to Tolkien's in quality- and not just a "fast read" )

- as it sounds like you have studied some of these books- and I have not...

I would still maintain, even though I have not studied these other works of Fantasy  ( that have followed in Tolkien's wake ) I still feel he has had a tremendous influence on many ( if not all ) of these Fantasy writers,

and that he ( more or less ) "set the standard" ( I'm tempted to say "The Gold Standard" )

 for works of Heroic Fantasy to follow...

Good Afternoon To All,  Ardo Whortleberry

[TiggerBear]

I would still maintain, even though I have not studied these other works of Fantasy ( that have followed in Tolkien's wake ) I still feel he has had a tremendous influence on many ( if not all ) of these Fantasy writers,
and that he ( more or less ) "set the standard" ( I'm tempted to say "The Gold Standard" )
for works of Heroic Fantasy to follow...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Of course. Not just his skill, but his wide publication ensures many authors following have read him. He just isn't the only author from his time period to have done so. Howard, Saberhaven, Le Guin, Morecock, ect..
I just always see it going back even further.

Just don't let justified nostalgia hamper appreciation for newer authors.

You know one of the main reason Tolkien resonates so well, is the use of the underlying mythology of his initial target audience. The universal themes resell so often because of the ease of comprehension. Anyone else notice that if it isn't a dance movie, the majority of teen movies recently are all Skakespheare translations.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Greetings, TiggerBear ( and Company )...

Please do not construe this as further argument on my part- it's simply that your statement that: "...one of the main reasons Tolkien resonates so well, is the use of the underlying mythology of his initial target  audience..." has provoked my mind into wandering off down a lane of thought about my own personal

reference points of "underlying mythology" that I brought with me when I first read the stories...

I think  ( perhaps because I was so young when I first read the stories ) I had not previously been exposed to

much of this "underlying mythology" until I had read Tolkien for the first time- ( unlike his "initial target  audience" )... When I was little, of course I had been exposed to Mother Goose Rhymes and Brothers Grimm Style "Fairy-Stories" ( which had been "toned-down" as to be more palatable for tender young minds ). All of these stories, even though they might occur in a "Never-Never Land", seemed to take place in a thinly disguised version of Medieval/Rennaissance/Baroque Europe- the exact period and locale being ambiguous, however..      The Cinderella story, for instance, is represented like it could have occured in the vicinty of

"Mad King Ludwig's Fairy Tale Castle" of Late Nineteenth Century  Bavaria ( and, of course, he was at least partially inspired to build that castle by the Romantic Fairy Tale Genre to begin with )....

There were the "Bartholomew" stories by Dr. Suess- which made quite an impression on me-

with its kooky Kingdom ( which was also a kind of "Never-Never Land" along the same lines as the other stories- but had their own unique perspective )...

The only "Elves" I was familar with were the Liliputian Sprites in "THe Elves And The Shoemaker"...

There was the sanitized, Romaniticized "Robin Hood" Mythology, where all the grime and grit and human suffering of the real Medieval England had been transformed into a Picnic In Sherwood Forest Park with Robin and his Merry Men...   

There was King Arthur and The Knights Of The Round Table, with  Merlin, who could be considered the

prototype for "Wizards" to follow ( I only attempted to read T.H. White's "The Once And Future King" A.T.

{ "After Tolkien" }...  as I also believe I only read the actual Robin Hood Stories for myself "A.T." )

I had a Halloween Decoration, when I was little- that depicted a Black Cat - its hackles raised- in front of a Full Moon...When I inquired to my mother what this was, she told me it was a "Goblin"...

When I saw "The Wizard Of Oz", the Flying Monkeys scared the bejabbers out of me- and I suppose I might have re-pictured "Goblins" as something more closely resembling those same Flying Monkeys...

But, when I read "The Hobbit"- I had to re-imagine just what a "Goblin" might look like...

I have a little more to say on the subject, but I've certainly said enough for now,

• So, In Closing, Good Afternoon To All,           Ardo Whotleberry 

[oldBPLstackden…]

Greetings, Everyone, ( or at least, anyone who still has the patience to stick with me through all my meanderings down Memory Lane ... )

I need to preface this second half of my letter by confessing that I flat-out lied in yesterday's letter... I'm not sure what drove me to do it, except that I guess I wanted to include "The Wizard Of Oz" in my reveries, and to connect that movie in with my train of thoughts...That movie did make a deep impression on my young mind- and those Flying Monkeys really did scare me- but I never thought of them in terms of being "Goblins"-  I had no reference point, no preconception (  that I can think of- except for that Black Cat- which wasn't a "Goblin", of couse, it was just a cat ) of what a "Goblin" should look like- when I read "The Hobbit" for the first time- and yet, even from the very sketchy description of Goblins that Tolkien provided in his story, a picture of what they must look like emerged in my imagination...

Many of the other possible sources ( or at least, precedents )  for Tolkien's stories I did not become familiar with until after I had read { H } and LOTR...                                                                                                    Many of these I only read about for the first time in that book I have mentioned before,

 [ Tolkien, A Look Behind LOTR, by Lin Carter ] in which, Mr. Carter went over The Eddas,

the stories behind Wagner's Ring Cycle, and Nordic Mythology ( making a comparison between Gandalf and Odin )...And the book also covered The Fantasy Genre's history in Literature ( discussing "Orlando Furioso", Spenser's Faerie Queene, the work of Walter De LaMare,  H. Rider Haggard, Ron E. Howard, etc. )...

I didn't know anything about Beowulf, either , until several years "A.T."- when we studied the first part of the story in my Junior High School English class- and I went on to follow up with a little further study, reading an adaption of the whole story, even attempted to listen to an audio recording of the original poem- ( in Old English )...

I also only learned, years afterwards, that there had actually existed such things as "Lake Towns" in Prehistoric Europe ( although not on the same scale as in { H }, I believe )...

                       Good Afternoon To All, Ardo Whortleberry 

[JesseBC]

Trying to determine the "originality" of Tolkien poses some of the same problems as comparing him to contemporary fantasy writers in the first place.

Because the way we fetishize "originality" today is relatively new -- likely because the ability to self-publish is much more readily available these days and copyright laws have tightened in such a way as to interfere with the time-honored literary tradition of drawing upon and reinventing older stories, which is now regarded as a particularly odious form of theft.

Today, being called a "plagiarizer" is about on par with being called a child molester, even though plagiarism has no legal definition.

The funny thing is this obsession with originality is directly counter (and probably a reaction against) postmodern art, which much more blatantly recycles previous forms and works.

So holding Tolkien to the same standard of originality to which we subject writers today is unfair -- akin to charging him with a crime that wasn't against the law when he committed it.

Of course, it's arguably unfair to hold contemporary writers to this standard, but if we're going to compare Tolkien to contemporary fantasy writers, the rules of engagement should at least be discussed beforehand.

PS Yes, I remember when Lloyd Alexander died last year. The Guardian ran a worthy obituary of him. I was sad -- not only because Alexander (as well as Tolkien) were so influential to me as a child, but because Alexander abandoned writing for an adult audience that he didn't feel understood him. I was sadly grateful that one of the biggest disappointments of his career was so much to the benefit of my own childhood.

---

TiggerBear wrote:
Dear Tigger Bear...
I guess maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough in that letter...The point I was trying to make was that
Tolkien's works were much LESS "made from whole cloth" than many other works of Fantasy...
I think anyone would would agree that authors can be influenced by just about anything ( or possibly even everything ) that they have ever read ( or seen and heard ) before , as well as their own experiences...Ardo


I don't agree, all he has is fresh copy rights. (smile) Yes he rode the wave crest of high fantasy being published at the time. Just as Mary Shelly and Brom Stoker rode their own. Read Norse mythology, see Wagner's "Ring" cycle". Tolkien's elves, dwarves, the ring, Smaug, ect..
I was trying to say as that doesn't make him "unoriginal". Just as with a newer book "The Rover" by Melodom the use of halflings, doesn't detract from the quality of the story. Did that author probably read the "Hobbit", yeah but he also could have gotten them from Welsh faerie tales.
If you picking apart a book looking for elements and going this person read Tolkien, you're cutting that author short.

However if you want to site works such as Dennis L. McKiernan Iron tower trilogy. Where the author obliviously took LOR put in a shredder and then pasted it back together. Read his intro for his justification. Where in a book the characters, world, plot all are close echoes directly from Tolkien, buy all means.

---

[oldBPLstackden…]

                 JesseBC...

I enjoyed and appreciated your posting very much. You certainly know how to put your words together in a precise, eloquent and well - thought out manner...

 I am always a little embarrassed at my own attempts at expository writing ---   [ when I see really good writing occur ]    --- as I tend to fumble around and get a little lost in my  own letters...

I am a little worried though --- we just might have to hire a "Panel Of Experts" in order to decide just what the

proper "Rules Of Engagement" should be...

P.S.          ---    Speaking of "fumbling around", I'd like to apologize to everyone for meandering around    [ and getting lost in ]   my childhood memories in my previous two postings to this thread...

I think what I was trying to do was grasp at something having to do with : How much of one's  "Collective Unconcious" ( if such a thing actually exists ) - and how much the Archetypes [ that have been established in one's mind by books one may have read ( or  been read to from )  and movies one may have seen, etc. ] are brought with one when one encounters a book like "The Hobbit"  or LOTR for the first time...    

Or is there no difference between that so-called "Collective Unconcious" and everything you remember from your own "Personal Unconcious"?   ---

Perhaps all my meandering thoughts should have gone to the "Foundations Of Fantasy" thread, instead?

Thank You All,    And Good Night,     Ardo Whortleberry

[lorien]

I started reading Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century last night. He starts right off in his Forward: "The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic." By "fantastic" he does not limit himself to what is considered mainstream "fantasy" or what is put on the shelves of as fantasy fiction, but to the whole area of literature that involves some world creation. Besides fantasy he includes: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. I found his selection of books as the most distinctive in this category to be most interesting and thought some of you might have some comments on his choices. They included:

Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm
William Golding: Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle
Ursula Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed
Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity's Rainbow

[lorien]

Shippey and Fantasy

I have jumped ahead to his final chapter on "The Followers and the Critics" as I thought it might be more relevant to this thread. Most of the authors Shippey talks about are not familiar to me but may be well-known to some of you and you will better understand what he is talking about. He is examining the influence of Tolkien on later writers -- from those that were mainly "rip-offs" to those who internalized Tolkien's contribution to the genre and produced something quite original on their own. He states categorically: "No one, perhaps, is ever again going to emulate Tolkien in sheer quantity of effort, in building up the maps and the languages and the histories and the mythologies of one invented world, as no one is ever again going to have his philological resources to draw on." He mentions several authors that he feels have, though, been fairly successful in this area including George R.R. Martin, Michael Scott Rohan, Robert Jordan, David Eddings, and Guy Gavriel Kay (who was apparently Christopher Tolkien's assistant with The Silmarillion).

In the rip-off category he puts the highly popular and successful series by Terry Brooks: The Sword of Shannara. In the original area he refers to the "flavour of 'rooted' works." He specifically singles out Stephen Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" series. He states that these books are nowhere near like Tolkien's LOTR except that "the similarity between Tolkien and Donaldson is rather in the landscape, or the people-scape, through which the anti-hero passes." He devotes a bit of space to discussing that work. Another one he singles out and goes into in depth on is Alan Garner and his The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Strandloper. He also mentioned in the gothic area Avram Davidson's Peregrine Secundus and also Michael Swanwick's "brilliantly inventive" The Iron Dragon's Daughter.

[paulgoatallen]

Tigger:
You're absolutely right about there being nothing new in the world – especially in the realm of fantasy – but there are a handful of writers who have quietly redefined and reconstructed the genre and all its conventions from the ground up and are, in my humble opinion, the future of the genre.

1. Patrick Rothfuss: whose debut novel The Name of the Wind – no pun intended – just blew me away. Talk about having a unique storytelling voice – this guy is going to be HUGE.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780756404079&itm=1

2. Stepan Chapman: his novel The Troika is an amalgam of SF and surrealist fantasy that pushes the boundaries of both genres. This guy isn't all that prolific but his imagination and singularly unique writing style make him a giant among other writers. Genuis, genius, genius.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781890464028&itm=5

3. Paul Di Filippo: again, like Chapman, a writer who is very hard to categorize but his highly intellectual (and highly sardonic) writing style make whatever he writes – be it SF, fantasy, mystery or speculative fiction – unpredictable and unforgettable. Read just one of Di Filippo's stories or novels and you be be hooked...

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780743498227&itm=27

If any of you are looking for something "different" – something not blatantly derivative of Tolkien – you should definitely pick up books by any of these three, especially Rothfuss' first novel, which I predict will be the first book in a saga that will lay the groundwork for all epic fantasy in the 21st century – it really is masterful storytelling...

Paul

---

TiggerBear wrote:
Not even Tolkien, Le Guin , or Howard created whole cloth worlds. Each of them admitted and acknowledged this. Every Author is influenced by their own exposures myths, customs, folk lore, other tales. Tolkien work echoed the regional faerie tales he grew up with, and the only reason this is not as quickly noticeable. Is because his reference points are often so old that authorship is lost. So anytime you read a new book and you notice "hey haven't I read this before?". What's important is how well the story being retold. Not that it is.

The old quote "put a handful of monkeys in a room with a typewriter, eventually they'll type out Skakespheare". There is nothing new in this world.

---

[TiggerBear]

First, been busy for a few days so this references a few posts.

oldBPLstackden…
Never an argument, always a conversation.

I never got the "sanitized" versions of the fairy tales. Cinderella's sisters chopped off the toes to try and fit in the glass slippers. Hansel and Gretal knew the were in trouble when the old woman stoked her fire with bones. The original fairy tales were scary for good reason, children needed to be weaned into how harsh life outside the family could really be.
But I was emersed in folk tales and myths. The Summer and the Winter king, Coyote steals Crow's hat, Balder's birthday party and so on. These were a much my bedtime stories as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, (forgive me, but I've forgoten the name of the BerrRabbit author), ect...
Oh and "the Wizard of OZ", those monkeys scared a lot of kids. Personally though my mom would tell you that I asked for one of my very own, for years after I first saw it as a 2 year old. They were Soooo cute. Those trees though, Buurrrr. I loved the books its based on, ever read them?

JesseBC

Exactly, really though you have to wonder about the copywrite laws. Is it the Authors or the publishing companies? Case in point Sci-Fi channel's copywrite of the word Earthsea in any video medium with in the US. Keeps the movie "Tales of Earthsea" the newest Miyazaki anime movie out of the US until the year 2012. Copywrite of a WORD!?

Check out Spider Robinson's short story "Melancholy Elephants". One of the best points I've ever come across for the ills of perpetual copywrites.

[JesseBC]

I suppose that's a natural outgrowth of realism -- surrealism. Which I suppose then gave birth to absurdism, which is just existentialism carried to its logical conclusion. There's a startlingly thin line between Tom Stoppard, South Park, and reality television.

We move from depicting life as it is to depicting life as it could be to questioning what the point of it all is.

Though I would still put Tolkien in the modernist camp and it's not as though writers at the dawn of realism weren't coming up with fantastical creations (Frankenstein?)

Tolkien was still, in a sense, depicting "life as it is" rather than questioning the flimsy boundary between reality and delusion or questioning the point of existence, which I would say Vonnegut and Pynchon certainly were.

---

lorien wrote:
I started reading Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century last night. He starts right off in his Forward: "The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic." By "fantastic" he does not limit himself to what is considered mainstream "fantasy" or what is put on the shelves of as fantasy fiction, but to the whole area of literature that involves some world creation. Besides fantasy he includes: allegory and parable, fairy-tale, horror and science fiction, modern ghost-story and medieval romance. I found his selection of books as the most distinctive in this category to be most interesting and thought some of you might have some comments on his choices. They included:

Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm
William Golding: Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle
Ursula Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed
Thomas Pynchon: The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity's Rainbow

---

[JesseBC]

I don't know the details of the Earthsea case, but I'm assuming it involved trademark violation rather than copyright. Copyright is more limited than trademark (and slightly less insane). Individual words, phrases, titles, combinations of musical notes, etc. can't be copyrighted, but virtually anything can be trademarked. UPS has a trademark on the color brown. Hooters has a trademark on "large breasts."

In theory, US copyright law is supposed to stimulate innovation by protecting artists.

In practice, it mostly protects publishers and producers at the expense of artists and the public.

But the laws and mood of the courts are separate from public opinion and I really think this obsession with "originality" is a backlash against the blatantly cannibalistic art of the last 50 years or so.

It's as if we're so frantic to believe that there really MUST BE something new under the sun that we must publicly draw and quarter the Viswanathans and the Jayson Blairs just for good measure.

The extremes are dizzying. On the one hand, you have this whole fan-fiction subculture existing in a dubious legal limbo. Then, on the other, you have people that scream plagiarism over what was clearly parody.

Weird stuff.

---

TiggerBear wrote:
First, been busy for a few days so this references a few posts.

oldBPLstackden…
Never an argument, always a conversation.

I never got the "sanitized" versions of the fairy tales. Cinderella's sisters chopped off the toes to try and fit in the glass slippers. Hansel and Gretal knew the were in trouble when the old woman stoked her fire with bones. The original fairy tales were scary for good reason, children needed to be weaned into how harsh life outside the family could really be.
But I was emersed in folk tales and myths. The Summer and the Winter king, Coyote steals Crow's hat, Balder's birthday party and so on. These were a much my bedtime stories as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, (forgive me, but I've forgoten the name of the BerrRabbit author), ect...
Oh and "the Wizard of OZ", those monkeys scared a lot of kids. Personally though my mom would tell you that I asked for one of my very own, for years after I first saw it as a 2 year old. They were Soooo cute. Those trees though, Buurrrr. I loved the books its based on, ever read them?

JesseBC

Exactly, really though you have to wonder about the copywrite laws. Is it the Authors or the publishing companies? Case in point Sci-Fi channel's copywrite of the word Earthsea in any video medium with in the US. Keeps the movie "Tales of Earthsea" the newest Miyazaki anime movie out of the US until the year 2012. Copywrite of a WORD!?

Check out Spider Robinson's short story "Melancholy Elephants". One of the best points I've ever come across for the ills of perpetual copywrites.

---

[BarbaraN]

I had posted something on this book elsewhere. It is no longer available except on the used market but in my searching around for copies of it I found it on Google Reader where you can read excerpts from it online. You might have to cut and paste the link. I think information on this book probably belonged in this thread.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=8tfVqW5Fy8AC&dq=meditations+on+middle+earth&printsec=frontcov...

[TiggerBear]

I don't know the details of the Earthsea case
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well minus the legalese, it states exclusive rights to withhold the use of the word in any video medium. Articles discussing it use the term copywrite infringement.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Good Evening, TiggerBear ( and Everyone )...

I only crave a little bit of clarification. When you said you never "got" the sanitized versions of Fairy Tales, did you mean:

 (A) You never approved of the reasoning / rationalizations behind the "sanitizing"     OR...

 (B)  You were never read the "sanitized" versions as bedtime-stories?

I only learned about just how gruesome the original Fairy Tales actually were in recent years- and of course, I can see why they were made so gruesome  ( at the time they were made) ... The Outside World was dangerous enough for children   ( even without the presence of Witches who owned houses made out of gingerbread and candy )...and perhaps that is even true today... In fact, I'd say "The Outside World" still has its share of pitfulls for adults, as well...

But, I think, probably as early as the beginning of the Twentieth Century, there was a "Movement"  ( I guess you could call it ) to "Clean Up" those gruesome tales, so as not to be so disturbing to "innocent, impressionable young minds"... I could never say for certain which versions my grandparents heard, but I do feel certain that my mother never got the "hardcore" versions when she was growing up...

 ( only the "Disney Version" was more like it... )

I can't remember for sure if those trees in "The Wizard Of Oz" scared me or not... Probably, if I had seen the movie when I was a little younger than when I did see it for the first time  ( which was when I was either six or seven years old ) the entire movie would have given me nightmares...     ...Just as "Monstro The Whale" did after my mother took me to see Disney's "Pinnochio"...  I guess I always was a bit of a  "weenie" ( at least, when I was little )... I was also terrified of wolves after I was read "Little Red Riding Hood"...

 ( I was afraid there might be some "wolves" hiding in the closet )...

I'm afraid I was never read to from those other stories you mentioned, but I assume that I would have enjoyed them  ( as well as any others ) if they had  been read to me... ( when I was little, I loved to have books read to me, and as soon as I learned to read, I loved to read books )...

 I was read those "Bartholomew Cubbins" Fantasy Books ( by Dr. Suess ) however...

But, as to "The Wizard Of Oz" books...  I saw that there was a whole series of those books ( on the "Fantasy" shelves in The Children's Room at the Library ) but no, I never did read any of them...

I had already read "The Hobbit"  ( and  some of the "Narnia" series, and probably LOTR, as well ) and my tastes were mainly for "Heroic Fantasy" after that...  The "Oz" books just did not look like my "Cup Of Tea" to me...

[  I did enjoy the series of Fantasy books, by an Edward Eager ( "Half Magic", etc.)  which were not

 "Heroic Fantasy" ... They revolved around a family of brothers and sisters who found themselves slipping in and out of  ( and going back and forth from  )  the world of everday reality and "The Land Of Magic".....

 But I can't remember for sure if those stories were "Pre-Tolkien" or "Post-Tolkien" for me... ]

Now, I know I have talked way too long upon these matters, so I will forthwith shut up... Ardo

[TiggerBear]

I only crave a little bit of clarification. When you said you never "got" the sanitized versions of Fairy Tales, did you mean:
(A) You never approved of the reasoning / rationalizations behind the "sanitizing" OR...
(B) You were never read the "sanitized" versions as bedtime-stories?
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NoProb.
Option B. I got the ole time scary ones, occasionally read out of copies older than my parents(which since my dad was born in 1930, says alot).

Being scared wolves used to be a good thing. Even in this century during harsh winters, they used to eat people.