The Ultimate Fantasy Series Ranking

Author page

E.R. Eddison

2 universes Last reviewed 2026-08-11

Eric Rücker Eddison (1882–1945) was born in Adel, Leeds, and was educated privately alongside future author Arthur Ransome before attending Eton College and Trinity College, Oxford. He spent the bulk of his professional life as a distinguished civil servant with the Board of Trade, which he joined in 1906; his government service was recognized with appointments as Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1924 and Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1929. He was also active with the Viking Society for Northern Research, reflecting his deep interest in Norse and Icelandic literature. Eddison retired from the civil service in 1938 to devote himself fully to writing. His masterwork, The Worm Ouroboros (1922), remains his best-known novel, an epic fantasy of war and heroism among warring kingdoms, composed in an elaborately archaic, Jacobean-inflected prose style drawing on Icelandic sagas and Elizabethan literature. He followed it with the ambitious but ultimately unfinished Zimiamvian Trilogy—Mistress of Mistresses (1935), A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941), and the posthumously published The Mezentian Gate (1958). Eddison's dense, ornamented style drew a mixed response even from admirers: J. R. R. Tolkien praised its sheer literary merit while criticizing its underlying philosophy, whereas C. S. Lewis was an ardent enthusiast who reportedly asked to have The Worm Ouroboros read to him during his final illness. Later fantasists including Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert Silverberg celebrated Eddison as a pioneering figure in the development of epic fantasy as a literary form.

Universe(s)

The Worm Ouroboros

  • Core Canon books: 1
  • Current rank: #779 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.70
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Zimiamvia

  • Core Canon books: 2
  • Current rank: #695 in the official ranking
  • Weighted average: 3.66
  • Award recognitions: None recorded

Books

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

← All authors