Tanith Lee: Remembering the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel

Books
Written By Chris Well

Wishing the late author a happy birthday September 19

Influential genre author Tanith Lee won lots of awards, published lots of inventive fiction, and was probably responsible for the blockbuster Sandman comic book series. (Even if her name was never mentioned.)

Find in the article below:

  • A biography of the author Tanith Lee

  • Links to related articles

  • Selected books by Tanith Lee

British science fiction and fantasy author Tanith Lee (1947-2015) is a legend. First of all, she was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel award, for her book Death’s Master (1980). Over time, she actually won a number of awards—including the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Horror (from the Horror Writers Association), the Infinity Award (from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association), and The World Fantasy Award (from the World Fantasy Convention), among others.

Over her career, Lee wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories (including the Tales from the Flat Earth series and the titles for The Secret Books of Paradys), plus a children’s picture book (Animal Castle), and a number of poems. She was also among the writers for the BBC science fiction series Blake’s 7 (the episodes “Sand” and “Sarcophagus”).

As quoted by Astra Publishing House, one of Lee’s editors, Betsy Wollheim (DAW Books), loved reading Tanith Lee’s manuscripts: 

“When a Tanith Lee manuscript came into the DAW offices, I was like a woman possessed. When I began reading, nothing could interrupt me. I stayed in the office, transfixed, until I was finished, often not returning home until the wee hours of the morning. Leaving our dark and eerily deserted Manhattan office near dawn and venturing out onto the silent—yet unawakened —streets of midtown, I used to feel like Tanith’s heroine from The Birthgrave, her first DAW book: a woman emerging from a volcano into a strange and alien land.”

For her writing, Tanith Lee credited a number of influences. This includes many authors, plus fairy tales, painters, movies, music, other media, and even other details in life. In fact, the inspiration for her Flat Earth Series is said to be a game she played with her mother.

Speaking of influences of this person on that person, it’s recently become a point of discussion that Neil Gaiman’s much-applauded Sandman comic book series was “influenced” by Tanith Lee. Well, they phrased it a little differently. (Including how, for whatever reason, it never occurred to him to ever mention it.)

Below, we’ve got a list of Tanith Lee’s fiction you can check out. (Plus related links to a website, Facebook group, and more articles about the author and her fiction.

This post may contain some affiliate links. If you click the link, I earn a small commission. (At no extra cost to you. So relax.)

Just some of the books written by Tanith Lee

Tales from the Flat Earth series

Taking inspiration from One Thousand and One Nights, the fantasy series Tales from The Flat Earth are interconnected stories set on a flat world existing in a reality with four “layers”…

  • Night's Master (Flat Earth #1)

  • Death’s Master (Flat Earth #2)

  • Delusion’s Master (Flat Earth #3)

  • Delirium’s Mistress (Flat Earth #4)

  • Night’s Sorceries (Flat Earth #5)

  • The Earth is Flat: Tales from the Flat Earth and Elsewhere

The Secret Books of Paradys

This horror/fantasy series is set in an alternative version of Paris, taking place through different periods in the city’s dark history…

  • The Book of the Damned

  • The Book of the Beast

  • The Book of the Dead

  • The Book of the Mad

Monster books

Here are some of Lee’s standalone novels which used dark fantasy to explore moral complications…

  • The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

  • Kill the Dead

  • Lycanthia

  • Redder than Blood

  • Sabella

  • Volkhavaar

The Lionwolf Trilogy

These books chronicled the birth, life, death, rebirth, and redemption of a “rampaging man-god who strides red-handed across a world of endless winter and primordial savagery.”

  • Cast a Bright Shadow (The Lionwolf Trilogy #1)

  • Here in Cold Hell (The Lionwolf Trilogy #2)

  • No Flame But Mine (The Lionwolf Trilogy #3)

Silver

The spellbinding story of forbidden love between a human woman and a robot…

  • The Silver Metal Lover

  • Metallic Love

The Birthgrave Trilogy

This epic fantasy journeys through “a realm of brilliant cruel beauty and seductive ancient ruins, of savage war and grand conquest, of falling stars and silver gods”…

  • The Birthgrave

  • Shadowfire

  • Hunting the White Witch

Where to buy Tanith Lee’s books:

Chris Well

Chris Well been a writer pretty much his entire life. (Well, since his childhood.) Over the years, he has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio, and books. He now is the chief of the website Monster Complex, celebrating monster stories in lit and pop culture. He also writes horror comedy fiction that embraces Universal Monsters, 1960s sitcoms, 1980s action movies, and the X-Files.

https://chriswell.substack.com/
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