Phantasmion

by Sara Coleridge

Sara was the last of Coleridge's three surviving children, and in some ways the most interesting. Like Derwent, she was a linguist and translator; like Hartley, she was a poet. Phantasmion is an imaginative fairy tale on a grand scale, in prose interspersed with lyrical verse passages. The hero encounters spirits of the earth and storm, has many adventures (including being transformed into a flying serpent), and finally triumphs over the forces of darkness. After her father's death in 1834 Sara edited a number of his works, at first with her husband and cousin Henry Nelson Coleridge, then on her own. Her 1847 edition of Biographia literaria is especially impressive. She died in 1852.

Genres: Fantasy, Classics, Fiction, Fairy Tales

387 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1837

About the author

Sara Coleridge was an English author and translator. She was the fourth child and only daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife Sarah Fricker of Bristol.

Reviews

[Jonathan O'Neill]

DNF @ 64%
Side Note: For those particularly poetic and romantic souls out there, this one’s for you.

This hurts, Cabrones! The only other book I’ve ever DNF’d was a pregnancy manual that I was gently coerced into reading. I know how to give birth just fine on my own, thank you very much! I’m a resilient reader, see? I can handle some garbage, I can wade through a great deal of horseshit but this book nearly put me into a reading slump, another thing that never happens to me, except for the last one which lasted 10 years (I don’t do things in halves). Nevertheless, this book is far from horrible and also has historical importance so I feel compelled to offer a short review due to the seemingly unknown nature of the story and the scarcity of information regarding the tale and it’s author.

Phantasmion (1837), written by Sara Coleridge on her sick bed (a trend at the time) has been referred to as ”The First Fantasy Novel in the English Language. While I haven’t the expertise to comment on the accuracy of that description, it seems cause enough for further interest than it currently garners, the lack of which, I presume, is a result of the fact that it was written by a woman during the early Victorian period, an era in which women still faced adverse inequality and “Fantasy” (Fairy-Tale) was a genre reserved for Children. In my opinion, it’s a hybrid of Fantasy and Fairy-Tale, it is a Long Fairy-Tale (too long) with elements that would later become prevalent in the Fantasy genre.

I was reading this as part of a ‘Pre-Tolkien Fantasy’ list that I crumbed together. It’s the first (the earliest) on the list and I was really hoping to have found a hidden gem here. Alas, in the end it has concluded in an unfortunate battle of attrition.

There is War between Kingdoms, sinister plots, assassinations, Witches/Enchantress’, Spirits good and bad, Enchanted Weapons/Armour and Magic Vessels but all of this is background noise to what is, essentially, a whimsical fairy-tale Romance. A story that demonstrates the intensity and selfishness of young love and the anguish and grief that so often accompanies a lack of reciprocity of such love.

Those who enjoy a poet’s eye for detail and a slightly melodramatic tone with Periwinkle (definitely heavier than lilac but not quite purple) Prose will enjoy this one. Written in an Early-Victorian English, it’s sprinkled throughout with beautiful descriptions of environments that imbue the landscape with a consciousness all of its own. Those who don’t will lament the excessive amount of embellishment and endless multitudes of descriptive poetry and, like me, probably drift off and start thinking about the hundreds of other highly-anticipated reads on their TBRs.

The edition I read had a lot of typographical errors, even taking into account that it looks like a lot of the names were dropped in after the rest of the tale was written. The same error often occurs dozens of times as if the mistake was made and then copied and pasted throughout the rest of the book. Lastly, I found the use of the word “ejaculated” in exchange for “exclaimed” an interesting choice but on further investigation, it is just one of those hilarious (to an immature jackass like myself) by-products of the Evolution of the English language.

”Why hast thou chosen to conceal from a brother chief thy rank and dignity?”
“A brother chief!” ejaculated the captive…

I mean, I guess he really, REALLY likes Brother Chiefs!

[Nicholas Perez]

Really wish GoodReads would add the physical edition with this cover. Some of these more "obscure" classics are getting tricky to shelve.

[Adam Carnehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first fantasy novel? I would argue, yes, it is. Sara Coleridge creates a new world imbued with magic, where powerful fairies assist mortals in their quests - however petty or selfish they might be. While not creating the languages, cultures, and histories that future fantasy novelists would revel in, Coleridge does come up with some interesting locales (e.g. "Rockland," "Palmland," etc.) and paints wonderful scenes with crumbling, ancient ruins, labyrinthine caverns, and verdant, tangled woods. For me the most enjoyable parts of the novel involved the incredible fairies she created - fairies with remarkable power who are often fickle, but always surprising and humorous. Potentilla, Phantasmion's own personal fairy protector, continually gives him assistance to fight his battles, and I found these moments to be the most pleasurable moments in the book. It is just plain cool when she allows him to hop like a grasshopper, or gives him pincers and the ability to dig channels like an enormous beetle! Phantasmion is probably the weirdest novel I have ever read, and I wonder how widely read it was in the era leading up to the MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, and the other "grandfathers" of modern fantasy.

[Jaime K · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because I was thinking it inspired Tolkien, when it was really just considered the first full fantasy story. There are a lot of songs and poems--and, just like I do in LOTR, I skipped over them. Phantasmion begins as a boy but becomes a teenager of some indeterminate age, but he kept acting 8. He has a fairy give him wings then sticky hands and feet and then the magic kind of goes away. At some point there's a war but it takes up I think just one chapter, couldn't tell you anything about the battle. Phantasmion falls in love and then they're betrothed I think.

I would have marked it as DNF, but I was curious about everything even though I've retained almost none of it.

[Karen Cavalli]

"The first fairy tale written in English," writes one critic. As a fantasy writer, I was excited to read this work published in 1837 in England; I'd been searching for works of fantasy by women writers in earlier times. Author Sara Coleridge was the daughter of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the Lake Poets who I read and liked in college and made her living as a writer and translator. The tale itself centers around a haughty little boy having extraordinary experiences. The haughty little boy part is not engaging me, but the intelligent beings in the natural world are. More to tell.

[Keech Ballard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit dreamy, like so much of her father's poetry.

[BigBadBear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy 4 to 4.5 stars. Not because of it's plot or characters (it's easy to get lost who's who, and forget what happened if you're a slow reader). As one of the very first fantasy books (predates LOTR) and written during Victorian times, it's quite an interesting read. The plot is a simple fantasy where the hero, Phantasmion gets some insect powers and wages a war against the King of Rockland, Glandreth to save his own home of Palmland and prevent Glandreth from taking over the iron mines. He saves the princess, meets some friends, unites his allies, gets enough strength and defeats Glandreth.

That said, the reason I'm rating it so high is because of its verse. Not so much its prose, but Coleridge's writing has some of the verse I've read. She knows how to string words together to sound both convoluted and clear. It's really a joy to read and wonder how someone could create such sentences. It's not for everyone, but there were times I had to reread sentences to just grasp her abilities. This is typically what you'll be reading:

"With small hope of recovering his prisoner he rushed into the garden, and, passing towards the chief entrance through a shady avenue, beheld the traces of panthers' feet on the humid soil. But beyond the trees and gate, in the open sunshine, not a foot-mark was to be seen upon the firm dry earth; and, when he looked at the contracted shadows of cattle on the verdurous plain, and saw the broad blue sky, where a caroling bird was the only speck of darkness, he felt as if drowsy charms, and sunless vales, and the sable visages were but dreams of a long dim night."

[Lulu]

1837

[Kate Howe]

It just doesn't feel Victorian enough and that's what I'm in the mood for right now. It's a beautiful world but not much character development. I shouldn't have expected it to feel super Victorian since it was published in 1837.