ABSTRACT
The following chronology presents an overview of the development of interconnected eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century discourses foundational to the criticism of the fantastic. These sources draw on discussions of the novel and romance, ballads and fables, fairy writing, the sublime, the imagination, the supernatural in belief and in literature, oriental tales, Gothic literature, the Ossian controversy, and Romantic poetics. 1691 John Dryden, “Dedication to King Arthur” 1691 Wiliam Congreve, “Preface to Incognita” 1704 John Dennis, The Grounds for Criticism in Poetry 1705 Mary De La Rivière Manley, “Preface to The Secret History of Queen Zarah” 1712 Joseph Addison, “The Pleasures of the Imagination” from The Spectator Papers 1715 Pierre Daniel Huet, “The History of Romances” 1716 Richard Blackmore, “Essays on Several Subjects” 1721 Tamworth Reresby, “A Miscellany of Ingenious Thoughts” 1727 Daniel Defoe, “Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions” 1731 Thomas Stackhouse, “Reflections on the Nature and Property of Languages” 1743 Longinus, first English translation of “On the Sublime” 1747 John Baillie, “An Essay on the Sublime” 1750 Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 4 1752 John Hawkesworth, The Adventurer No. 4 1757 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful 1759 Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments 1762 Richard Hurd, Letters on Chivalry and Romance 1762 Lord Kames, Henry Home, “Grandeur and Sublimity” in Elements of Criticism 1764 Horace Walpole, “Preface to the First Edition,” The Castle of Otranto 1765 Thomas Percy “On Ancient Minstrels” 1765 Horace Walpole, “Preface to the Second Edition,” The Castle of Otranto 1765 Hugh Blair, “A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian” 1741773 John and Anna Letitia Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror” 1773 John and Anna Letitia Aikin, “On Romance, An Imitation” 1774 Thomas Warton, “Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction” 1778 Clara Reeve, “Preface to The Old English Baron” 1778 Frances Burney, “Preface to Evelina, Or A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World” 1783 James Beattie, “On Fables and Romance” 1785 Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance 1787 George Canning, The Microcosm No. 26 1798 Robert Southey, review, “Lyrical Ballads” 1800/1802 William Wordsworth, “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” 1816 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Statesman’s Manual 1817 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria 1817 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Notes” and “Gloss,” The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 1817–1819 Keats’s letters on the imagination, especially on “negative capability” 1818 Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Preface,” Frankenstein 1818 Walter Scott, review, “Frankenstein [by Mary Shelley]” 1819 John William Polidori, “Letter Prefaced to ‘The Vampyre’” 1820 Anna Letitia Barbauld, “Introduction to Almoran and Hamet” 1820 Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry 1826 Ann Radcliffe, “On the Supernatural in Poetry” 1827 Walter Scott, “On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition” 1830 Walter Scott, “Introductory Remarks on Popular Poetry” 1830 Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft 1830–1832 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk 1831 Mary Shelley, “Introduction,” Frankenstein
