Philip, N., 1981, A Fine Anger – A Critical Introduction to the Work of Alan Garner. William Collins. London. Garner begins the book with a map of The Edge, followed by the prologue - The Legend of Alderley, which was first printed in the Manchester Mail in 1805. The prologue sets the tone perfectly for a story that is based in the woods and caves surrounding Alderley, but where the ‘real’ world collides with myths and legends. Alan's own grandfather, Joseph Garner, "could read, but didn't and so was virtually unlettered", but instead taught his grandson the various folk tales about The Edge, [4] Alan later remarking that, as a result, he was "aware of [the Edge's] magic" when as a child he would often play there with his friends. [7] The story of the king and the wizard living under the hill played an important part in the young Alan's life, becoming "deeply embedded in my psyche" and influencing his novels, in particular The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. [4]

The Owl Service (1969), a British TV series transmitted by Granada Television based on Garner's novel of the same name. Academic specialist in children's literature Maria Nikolajeva characterised Red Shift as "a difficult book" for an unprepared reader, identifying its main themes as those of "loneliness and failure to communicate". [25] Ultimately, she thought that repeated re-readings of the novel bring about the realisation that "it is a perfectly realistic story with much more depth and psychologically more credible than the most so-called "realistic" juvenile novels." [26] The Stone Book series and folkloric collections: 1974–94 [ edit ] Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Garner is indisputably the great originator, the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien, and in many respects better than Tolkien, because deeper and more truthful ... Any country except Britain would have long ago recognised his importance, and celebrated it with postage stamps and statues and street-names. But that's the way with us: our greatest prophets go unnoticed by the politicians and the owners of media empires. I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admiration. [21] Garth, John (22 May 2013). "The Storyteller". Oxford Today. Archived from the original on 29 October 2014 . Retrieved 8 November 2014. Cadellin Silverbrow is not a typical kindly wizard. Although supportive at times, he tends to retreat into his lair, leaving the children to roam the woods vainly pleading for his return. Although Cadellin is careful to explain that he behaves this way for the children's own good, they often feel he has betrayed them. Additional characters on the side of good include some extremely effective dwarves, whom Garner evidently prefers to elves. Few characters in literature are so infectiously gallant as Durathror, the joyous warrior dwarf who helps rescue the children from the svart caverns.

Gillies, Carolyn (1975). "Possession and Structure in the Novels of Alan Garner". Children's Literature in Education. 6 (3): 107–117. doi: 10.1007/BF01263341. S2CID 144402971. The mythology aspects are pretty cool, too. The references to Ragnarok, etc. I don't know whether it's that whole 'younger readers can accept the unnatural much better than adults' thing that people mentioned when reading Diana Wynne Jones, though, but I found it hard to follow and it all piled in on top of everything else in a haphazard, difficult to process manner. Didn't help that I read parts of it when everyone was around talking, and parts in a cafe, but I think part of it was the writing. Faulkes, Anthony and Barnes, Michael (compilers) A New Introduction to Old Norse. Part III: Glossary and Index of Names. Fourth ed. Viking Society for Northern Research, 2007. The novel met with critical praise and led to a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath, published in 1963. Growing to dislike the main characters, Garner decided not to write the envisioned third part of the trilogy. For the 1963 reprint Garner also made several changes to the original text and by the late 1960s he came to reject The Weirdstone of Brisingamen as "a fairly bad book". [2] Although it fell out of critical approval it was adapted in the late 1970s as a musical that was staged in Manchester and Essex. In 2010 HarperCollins brought out a special 50th anniversary issue of the book, containing a new preface by Garner and praise from various other figures involved in children's literature, while 2011 saw BBC Radio 4 produce a radio adaptation. In August 2012 Boneland, the third volume in Garner's trilogy, was finally released.

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen is one of the most important books in children’s fantasy. It has been an enormous inspiration to me and countless other writers, and is as enjoyable and fascinating now as it was when I first read it, wide-eyed and mesmerised at the age of ten.’ Garth Nix Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work.