There’s some borderline ones I’m still considering (such as the Narnia books), but a definite omission in my view is Watership Down (although there may be some debate as to whether it is fantasy or not?)

If you had to pick 5 from the list, to recommend to someone looking to explore the sub-sub-sub-sub-genre, which would they be?

If Fantasy’s a sub-genre of Speculative Fiction (which is, I suppose, a sub-genre of Fiction itself), and Urban Fantasy’s a sub-genre of Fantasy, and Rural Fantasy’s a sub-genre of that, it’s a sub-sub-sub-genre, no?

Thanks for the list!

I’ve got Mythago Wood waiting near the top of my reading pile. Waiting until camping season, though.

Fair enough. Until Rural Fantasy gets gobbled up and Urban Fantasy cuts down all the trees, fills all the streams and lays down concrete!

Or until Rural Fantasy reclaims the crumbling remains of the cities, and oak saplings thrust up through the broken pavements!

Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham also spring to mind (or possibly just “Tolkien, passim”), and Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker, which is an into-the-woods portal-quest. On the YA front, there’s also Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse, which is manor-house fantasy.

There’s a strong backwoods tradition in US writing, but that usually involves a lot of urban/rural contrasting, so it’s a nice set of edge cases. Charles de Lint’s Someplace to be Flying (and others, but that’s pretty exemplary I think) and Spider Robinson’s Time Pressure occur to me.

I can sense that my TBR is elongating as we speak. I have been meaning to read the Briar King for a long time.

BTW, how does Tolkien fit with LoTR? I understand that a great deal of the quest involves nature as they travel through the wilderness. But after all isn’t the bigger theme here the epic good vs. evil and doesn’t the series share more touching points with epic fantasy?

Mark, the De Lint is a city setting, but with a lot of visits (including extended flashbacks) to the country, from what I recall. His The Little Country is set in a small Cornish village, with around the same level of rural-ness as Over Sea Under Stone.

You might also want to look into the stories of the Mabinogion, which are a lot more self-consciously fantastic than most myths, and of course mediaeval Wales didn’t do urban.

Missed Ursula le Guin’s “Always Coming Home”. (Or is that post-apocalyptic rather than rural?)

The “Silver John” stories are by Manly Wade WELLMAN.

A number of his stories were the basis for some of the best classic TWILIGHT ZONE stories.

He also wrote some really excellent YA novels. I hope they are still in print.