Two Oxford professors, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, single-handedly created the modern fantasy genre.

Modern fantasy owes its foundation to J.R.R. Tolkien, the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. Tolkien began writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s and published it in 1937, followed by the epic The Lord of the Rings, released between 1954 and 1955. His background in philology enabled him to construct complete languages—including Quenya and Sindarin—before writing the narratives that would feature them.C.S. Lewis, a Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, published The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950. While Tolkien emphasized linguistic authenticity and historical internal consistency, Lewis drew on Christian allegory and classical mythology to appeal to a wider audience. Both writers benefited from their membership in The Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that met regularly at the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, where members provided critical feedback that refined their complex fictional worlds.Before Tolkien and Lewis, fantasy literature was often dismissed as children's fairy tales or fragmented folklore. By applying rigorous academic standards to their fiction, they developed what Tolkien called "sub-creation"—a concept he elaborated in his 1939 lecture "On Fairy-Stories." This methodology demonstrated that fictional worlds could possess the same internal logic and historical depth as real-world narratives. Today, the fantasy genre generates billions of dollars annually and continues to rely on the high fantasy templates and conventions they established more than seven decades ago.