The Big Book of Classic Fantasy di Ann e Jeff VanderMeer

Jeff VanderMeer è sicuramente una delle voci più importanti del fantastico contemporaneo, portavoce del new weird e giunto alla notorietà anche in Italia grazie soprattutto alla Trilogia dell’Area X, il cui primo romanzo Annientamento ha raggiunto il grande pubblico grazie anche a una trasposizione cinematografica di successo. VanderMeer, insieme alla moglie Ann, è anche stato curatore della monumentale raccolta di oltre mille pagine, The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, pubblicata nel 2012, che copre il genere dalle origini sino ai giorni nostri.

Dopo che nel 2016 è stato pubblicato sempre con la loro curatela The Big Book of Science Fiction: The Ultimate Collection, ora la medesima operazione viene fatta con il genere fantasy in un volume di oltre 800 pagine uscito il 2 luglio con il titolo di The Big Book of Classic Fantasy: The Ultimate Collection.

L’interesse di tale antologia è la presenza di materiale proveniente da tutte le regioni del mondo, con quindi grande attenzione al fantasy non di matrice anglofona.

Qui di seguito, vi presentiamo l’elenco completo dei racconti inclusi nel volume, disponibile sia in formato cartaceo che digitale.

“The Queen’s Son” by Bettina von Arnim

“Hans-My-Hedgehog,” by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

“The Story of the Hard Nut,” by E. T. A. Hoffmann

“Rip Van Winkle,” by Washington Irving

“The Luck of the Bean-Rows,” by Charles Nodier

“Transformation,” by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“The Nest of Nightingales,” by Théophile Gautier

“The Fairytale About a Dead Body, Belonging to No One Knows Whom,” by Vladimir Odoevsky

“The Story of the Goblins who Stole a Sexton,” by Charles Dickens

“The Nose,” by Nikolai Gogol

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” by Edgar Allan Poe

“The Story of Jeon Unchi,” by Anonymous

“Feathertop: A Moralized Legend,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Master Zacharius,” by  Jules Verne

“The Frost King: Or, the Power of Love,” by Louisa May Alcott

“The Tartarus of Maids,” by Herman Melville

“The Magic Mirror,” by George MacDonald

“The Diamond Lens,” by  Fitz-James O’Brien

“Goblin Market,” Christina Rossetti

“The Will-o’-the-Wisps Are in Town,” by Hans Christian Andersen

The Legend of the Pale Maiden,” by Aleksis Kivi

“Looking-Glass House,” by Lewis Carroll

“Furnica, or the Queen of the Ants,” by Carmen Sylva

“The Story of Iván the Fool,” by Leo Tolstoy

“The Goophered Grapevine,” by Charles W. Chestnutt

“The Bee-Man of Orn,” by Frank R. Stockton

“The Remarkable Rocket,” by Oscar Wilde

“The Ensouled Violin,” by H. P. Blavatskaya

“The Death of Odjigh,” by Marcel Schwob

“The Terrestrial Fire,” by Marcel Schwob

“The Kingdom of Cards,” by Rabindranath Tagore

“The Other Side: A Breton Legend,” by Count Eric Stanlislaus Stenbock

“The Fulness of Life,” by Edith Wharton

“Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady,” by Vernon Lee

“The Little Room,” by Madeline Yale Wynne

“The Plattner Story,” by H. G. Wells

“The Princess Baladina—Her Adventure,” by  Willa Cather

“The Reluctant Dragon,” by Kenneth Grahame

“Iktomi Tales,” by Zitkala-Ša

“Marionettes,” by Louis Fréchette

“Dance of the Comets: An Astral Pantomime in Two Acts,” by Paul Scheerbart

“The White People,” by Arthur Machen

“Blamol,” by Gustav Meyrink

“Goblins: A Logging Camp Story,” by Louis Fréchette

“Sowbread,” by Grazia Deledda

“The Angry Street,” by  G. K. Chesterton

“The Aunt and Amabel,” by E. Nesbit

“Sacrifice,” by Aleksey Remizov

“The Princess Steel,” by W. E. B. Du Bois

“The Hump,” by Fernán Caballero

“The Celestial Omnibus,” by E. M. Forster

“The Legend of the Ice Babies,” by E. Pauline Johnson

“The Last Redoubt,” by William Hope Hodgson

“Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse,” by L. Frank Baum

“The Plant Men,” by Edgar Rice Burroughs

“Strange News from Another Star,” by Hermann Hesse

“The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka

“The Hoard of the Gibbelins,” by Lord Dunsany

“Through the Dragon Glass,” by A. Merritt

“David Blaze and the Blue Door,” by E. F. Benson

“The Big Bestiary of Modern Literature,” by Franz Blei

“The Alligator War,” by Horacio Quiroga

“Friend Island,” by Francis Stevens

“Magic Comes to a Committee,” by Stella Benson

“Gramaphone of the Ages,” by Yefim Zozulya

“Joiwind,” by David Lindsay

“Sound in the Mountain,” by Maurice Renard

“Sennin,” by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

“Koshtra Pivrarcha,” by E. R. Eddison

“At the Border,” by Der Nister

“The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyon,” by W. B. Laughead

“Talkative Domovoi,” by Aleksandr Grin

“The Ratcatcher,” by Aleksandr Grin

“The Shadow Kingdom,” by Robert E. Howard

“The Man Traveling with the Brocade,” by Edogawa Ranpo

“A Visit to the Museum,” by Vladimir Nabokov

“The Water Sprite’s Tale,” by Karel Čapek

“The Capital of Cat Country,” by Lao She

“Coyote Stories,” by Mourning Dove

“Uncle Monday,” by Zora Neale Hurston

“Rose-Cold, Moon Skater,” by María Teresa León

“A Night of the High Season,” by Bruno Schulz

“The Influence of the Sun,” by Fernand Dumont

“The Town of Cats,” by Hagiwara Sakutarō

“The Debutante,” by Leonora Carrington

“The Jewels in the Forest,” by Fritz Leiber

“Evening Primrose,” by John Collier

“The Coming of the White Worm,” by Clark Ashton Smith

“The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls,” by Marcel Aymé

“Leaf by Niggle,” by J. R. R. Tolkien

A new big collection by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, focused on the best fantasy tales from all over the world: it isThe Big Book of Classic Fantasy: The Ultimate Collection, more than 800 pages, published on July 2nd. See above the full list of contents. The book is available in paper and digital edition.