Literary Roots of the Game

Fantasy Masters
Before Gary Gygax wrote the Fantasy Supplement to Chainmail, before Dave Arneson created "The First Fantasy Campaign", before White Box, before any of the things that make up this hobby, there was the Heroic Fantasy Literature which inspired the hobby fathers to re-imagine the fantastic fiction they loved and bring it to the tabletop for a gaming experience with the same thrill, the same escapist entertainment they found in the literary works of R.E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and others. In his book Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, L. Sprague deCamp, himself an author, often partnering with Fletcher Pratt, of heroic fantasy, describes the birth and development of the literary genre from the beginnings with folk and faerie tales to the numerous imitators of Howard and Tolkien.
William Morris, an early anti-industrialist and medievalist, is credited by Mr. de Camp with authoring some of the earliest "modern" heroic fantasies in the style of the sagas, old tales of King Arthur and The Nibelungenlied. The section on Morris is followed by an essay on the work of Lord Dunsay, a British author of pre-Tolkien fantastic fiction. Lord Dunsany wrote fanciful tales of heroics often in worlds completely of his own imagination seemingly to entertain himself and his audience. Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter presents elves in a very non-Tolkien way and is a major influence for my own "concept" of elf in my games.
H.P. Lovecraft may seem a slightly odd inclusion in a selection of authors of heroic fantasy, but Mr. de Camp fits him into the narrative nicely. Mr. Lovecraft corresponded with and influenced nearly all his contemporaries including R.E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, both included as founding members of the heroic fantasy club. The suspense and forgotten mythos characteristic of H.P. Lovecraft's work is reflected in many subsequent stories clearly of the genre.
E.R. Edison and J.R.R. Tolkien were roughly contemporaries and associates of C.S. Lewis and other British authors of fantastic fiction. The writing circle they belonged to produced some of the seminal works of fantasy. E.R. Edison is perhaps less well known today, but is the author of The Worm Ouroboros which Mr. de Camps holds in high esteem. T.H. White and Fletcher Pratt round out the list of authors who get their own chapters in Mr. de Camps' book. T.H. White returned to the early King Arthur tales as inspiration for his Once and Future King. Fletcher Pratt wrote widely outside the genre as well as producing a number of heroic fantasy stories, many in conjunction with Mr. de Camp.
The last chapter in the book describes the work of author's who were continuing to write sword & sorcery tales in de Camp's day, folks like Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers is directed at an audience who read heroic fiction, but as of its publication in 1976 there was a growing off-shoot of that audience that was discovering White Box and adventure gaming. The overlap between de Camp's readers and those who played at the new hobby was probably significant and may remain so today. Just glancing at the jacket suggests to me that it could just as easy be the cover illustration of a fantasy RPG product. Maybe it's my age, but sometimes the lines between get a little blurry.