Gaslamp Fantasy

The nineteenth century wrote its own fantasies: ghost stories, fairy paintings, spiritualist seances. Gaslamp fantasy looks back at that era and takes its magic seriously. The label itself is young. Kaja Foglio coined it for the comic Girl Genius, begun in 2000-01, as an alternative to “steampunk”: as she put it, the comic had no punk and more than just steam.

The books came first. Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia (1988) was a Regency comedy of manners told in letters, with magic. Neil Gaiman's Stardust (1999) sent a Victorian village boy over a wall into Faerie, and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) became the best-known example of the mode.

Since then the shelf has grown in several directions: Gail Carriger's comic Soulless (2009), with vampires in London society, Cassandra Clare's Clockwork Angel (2010), Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons (2013), written as a lady naturalist's memoir, and Natasha Pulley's The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (2015).

Expect period voice, sometimes with letters, diaries or footnotes. Social rules carry as much weight as magical ones, and heroines are often working against both. Romance is common, and so is wit: many gaslamp novels are comedies of manners with a supernatural twist.

The settings are usually real cities, especially London, with real history in the background. Some books lean toward adventure and mystery, others toward slow, atmospheric literary fiction, so the shelf suits a wide range of moods.