I liked Elric, too, but never obsessively. He's one mean Melnibonéan.

I clicked on Lovecraft too, but briefly considered Dunsany (whom Lovecraft liked a lot).

You'd think that she'd make her sanity check eventually.

Really? It sounds like it might be fun, and my tastes aren't wildly uncommercial.

Epic Lovecraft hasn't been done yet, but both epic fantasy and Lovecraft are popular.

However, at the moment I'm distracted by the idea of people's feet being eaten by their Cthulhu slippers.

You're my favorite.

I think that Aviva's objections--and yours--are well-founded, and your rants are always welcome. I was being cryptic about it, but with this poll I was testing a theory about these two names that seem to loom so ridiculously large in the DNA of fantasy. I tried to come up with at least one more name, preferably a woman's name, to include, but I failed; maybe I should have included Le Guin, or even Dinesen, but the one came 30+ years after these two and the other could easily be argued out of the genre, I think. There are others, like Evangeline Walton, who novelized the Mabinogion back around Tolkien's time, or Hope Mirrlees, maybe--she only wrote the one fantasy book, but then Tolkien is mainly known for those four books, three of which were intended to be one. Shirley Jackson? Angela Carter? I was trying to get at influence, and it's troubling that I can't point to a specific name to counterbalance these guys with. Maybe it's just more diffuse, because the canon is such a dick about recognizing women; I think, too, that Jenn's example of the fairy tale impulse as standing in opposition to "epic" stories is at least on the right track, and maybe what I'm really after is something related to the fact that I've recently decided that I prefer women writers. I am, for some reason, wanting to map these things out a bit just for myself, and in a more useful way than, say, this thing. So I'm groping a bit, but I guess I've decided that part of what's stopped my blogging is a reluctance to be wrong or look stupid, and I'm determined to get over that.

Sorry so long; I read your comment as I was headed out for a bike ride and ended up thinking about it the entire time I was out.

I meant to say that I think the theory I was testing has been disproved, or at least dealt a major blow, which is why I'm shifting my thinking towards something a bit different. Mission of being wrong accomplished!

Heh; I was just groping towards that name in my reply to Haddayr, above. Too late for this poll, but I'm still trying to figure out what I'm talking about here, so I guess that's OK.