Colin Manlove (1942-2020) was literary critic with a particular interest in fantasy. Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (1975), considers at length works by Charles Kingsley, George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Mervyn Peake, and was written at a time when no serious study of the subject [of fantasy literature] has appeared.In it he posits a definition of fantasy as: A fiction evoking wonder and containing a substantial and irreducible element of supernatural or impossible worlds, beings or objects with which the mortal characters in the story or the readers become on at least partly familiar terms.
