George MacDonald's "The Golden Key" is a Victorian fairy tale about a boy's quest for a magical key and a girl's journey to find the country from which the shadows fall. It is considered a significant early work in the fantasy genre, influencing later authors like C.S. Lewis.
Sources for George MacDonald — The Golden Key
George MacDonald — The Golden Key in First Fantasy Literature
Held in the First Fantasy Literature chamber of the Babel Nexus Index.
- Apuleius — The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (170)
- The Arabian Nights' Entertainments (The Thousand and One Nights) (900)
- Anonymous (Arthur W. Ryder, trans.) — The Panchatantra (300)
- Sir Richard F. Burton — Vikram and the Vampire; or, Tales of Hindu Devilry (illus. Ernest Griset) (1870)
- Giovanni Boccaccio — The Decameron (1353)
- Sir Thomas Malory — Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)
- Ludovico Ariosto — Orlando Furioso (1532)
- Edmund Spenser — The Faerie Queene (1590)
- John Bunyan — The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
- Jonathan Swift — Gulliver's Travels (1726)
- Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué — Undine (1811)
- E. T. A. Hoffmann — The Nutcracker and the Mouse-King (1816)
- George MacDonald — Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858)
- Lewis Carroll — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
- Lewis Carroll — Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)
- George MacDonald — The Princess and the Goblin (1872)
- H. Rider Haggard — King Solomon's Mines (1885)
- H. Rider Haggard — She: A History of Adventure (1887)
- William Morris — The House of the Wolfings (1889)
- Arthur Machen — The Great God Pan (1894)
- Robert W. Chambers — The King in Yellow (1895)
- George MacDonald — Lilith: A Romance (1895)
- William Morris — The Well at the World's End (1896)
- L. Frank Baum — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
- E. Nesbit — Five Children and It (1902)
- J. M. Barrie — Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) (1904)
- Lord Dunsany — The Gods of Pegāna (1905)
- E. Nesbit — The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904)
- E. Nesbit — The Story of the Amulet (1906)
- Lord Dunsany — The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories (1908)
- Lord Dunsany — A Dreamer's Tales (1910)
- Lord Dunsany — The Book of Wonder (illus. Sidney H. Sime) (1912)
- James Branch Cabell — Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (1919)
- E. R. Eddison — The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
- Lord Dunsany — The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924)
- Hope Mirrlees — Lud-in-the-Mist (1926)
- Clark Ashton Smith — Short Fiction (1929)
- George MacDonald — The Light Princess (1864)
- Chrétien de Troyes — Four Arthurian Romances (1180)