In the 19th and early 20th centuries, much fantasy was published in the same magazines as science fiction (and written by the same authors, largely). After the phenomenal popularity, in the mid-20th century, of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia and Ursula K. Le Guin's [[A Wizard of Earthsea]trilogy], fantasy writing received a modern rebirth, often patterned after these seminal works and, like them, borrowing elements from myth, epic, and medieval romance. This fiction and its older predecessors in turn gave birth to fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, which in turn spawned more fiction in the genre.
See fantasy authors for information about individual authors who write in this genre.
Since the rise of popular fantasy fiction in the Twentieth Century, the fantasy genre has subdivided into a number of branches:
See also: