King of the Golden River

“It’s a shorter book – you could argue it’s a longer novella – but it was a breakthrough for modern fantasy. It’s the traditional fairytale setup of two evil brothers and a young, good brother. They live in a very fertile valley, and the two older brothers insult a traveller who turns out to be one of the four winds. Dire consequences ensue. For Ruskin as an early environmentalist, the natural environment is more valuable than gold in this story. At the beginning, the character doesn’t have the wisdom to see how important nature is – he wants gold rather than a healthy landscape – and the journey is a discovery that actually the most valuable thing is a beautiful, green, healthy, fertile land that we can engage with – both through healthy farming as well as leaving some land natural. And for the man who wrote ‘The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century,’ this is really key. Winds and water are so important to the story, and Ruskin is very concerned about how even the winds are being impacted by the industrial pollution.” Read more...

The Best Victorian Fantasy Novels

Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, Literary Scholar