Mythlore

• 1. Introduction

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  Mythlore is a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to the literature of myth and fantasy, with particular focus on three writers who changed the shape of modern storytelling. Its origins stretch back to January 1969, when Glen H. GoodKnight launched it as a fanzine with a distinctly serious purpose. The questions it was built to answer remain alive today: what makes myth matter, why do certain fantasy writers endure, and how do we read them rigorously?

  To understand Mythlore is to understand a small but persistent corner of literary scholarship. It grew from a fan publication into an indexed, peer-reviewed journal available freely online. Along the way it absorbed a rival publication, changed editors several times, and found its way into academic databases used by researchers around the world. That journey, from fanzine to open-access scholarship, is one of the stranger success stories in literary publishing.

• 2. GoodKnight and the Early Years

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  Glen H. GoodKnight founded both Mythlore and the Mythopoeic Society, and he launched the journal in January 1969. The early issues were fanzines in format, though GoodKnight gave them what he called a "sercon" orientation, shorthand for "serious and constructive." That phrase signaled an intention to treat fantasy literature with the same rigor that mainstream critics applied to other genres.

  For a period, alternate issues of a separate publication called Mythprint appeared alongside Mythlore, giving the early run an unusual double-publication rhythm. When GoodKnight became editor with issue twelve, he introduced a new subtitle to the table of contents page: "A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams Studies." That subtitle made the journal's central focus explicit, naming the three Inklings who would define its editorial identity for decades to come.

• 3. Absorbing the Tolkien Journal

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  Tolkien Journal was itself a "sercon" publication that predated Mythlore. Richard Plotz, founder of the New York Tolkien Society, started it in 1965. Plotz stepped down after issue eight, and Ed Meškys took over both the society and the journal.

  In issue fifteen of Tolkien Journal, Meškys announced a permanent merger of two institutions at once: the Tolkien Society of America joined with the Mythopoeic Society, and Tolkien Journal folded into Mythlore. That dual consolidation brought two overlapping fan communities under one roof and gave Mythlore a broader readership and a longer institutional lineage than it had possessed on its own.

• 4. Becoming Peer-Reviewed

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  Mythlore's transformation into a peer-reviewed journal did not happen gradually. It arrived with a specific issue number: issue eighty-five, published in Winter 1999, under the editorship of Theodore Sherman. That change elevated the journal's standing within academic literature and made it eligible for citation in professional scholarship.

  Since 2006, the Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft has served as editor-in-chief, a tenure that now spans two decades. The Tolkien Society's description of Mythlore as a "refereed scholarly journal" reflects that same post-1999 standing, confirming that the editorial standards established under Sherman have held across successive editorial leadership.

• 5. Indexing and Open Access

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  Mythlore's full text from 2002 onward became available through Expanded Academic ASAP, and the journal is also indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature and the Modern Language Association International Bibliography. An agreement with JSTOR was announced in 2019, extending its reach into one of the most widely used academic databases.

  Back issues are available online through an arrangement with Southwestern Oklahoma State University Library. The journal moved to open access in 2017, and by 2019 it had dropped its embargo on articles less than one year old. A printed index covering issues one through one hundred was published in January 2008 by The Mythopoeic Press; that index, with abstracts, has since been replaced by a freely downloadable electronic version updated twice each year from the journal's own website.