| The Encyclopedia of Fantasy | |
| Cover Artist: | Peter Goodfellow |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Subject: | Fantasy |
| Publisher: | Orbit Books UK; St. Martin's Press US |
| Pub Date: | 3 April 1997 |
| Media Type: | Print (hardback and paperback), Online |
| Pages: | 832 pp (first edition) |
| Isbn: | 978-1-85723-368-1 |
| Oclc: | 37106061 |
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is a 1997 reference work covering fantasy fiction, edited by John Clute and John Grant. As of November 2012, the full text of The Encyclopedia of Fantasy is available online, as a companion to the online edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.[1] Other than adding death dates, there are no plans to update the encyclopedia.[2]
The book was well-received on publication, receiving the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, and Locus Award in 1998.
The Encyclopedia was published in a format that matches the 1993 second edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It is slightly smaller in terms of content, containing 1,049 alphabetical pages, over 4,000 entries and approximately one million words, the bulk of which were written by Clute, Grant and Ashley. A later CD-ROM edition contains numerous revisions.
The Encyclopedia uses a similar system of categorization to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, but does not include an index of theme entries. A theme index was later included in the online addenda: see "External links" below. One of the major differences is that there are no entries related to publishing.
Characterizing the book as "an excellent and highly readable source for fantasy", the industry publication Library Journal described The Encyclopedia of Fantasy as "the first of its kind".[3]