Mythago Wood
core novel 1984 Mythago Wood
Record
| First published | 1984 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.76 (11,326 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| Page count | 332 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780575034969 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Mythago Wood, published in 1984, is set around Ryhope Wood, a small but seemingly boundless fragment of primeval English forest that proves far larger inside than its modest outer boundary suggests. After their father's death, his sons Steven and Christian continue his obsessive lifelong study of the wood, gradually discovering that it functions as a kind of labyrinth shaped by the collective unconscious of those living near it. Venturing deeper, they find the wood generates mythagos, physical embodiments of ancient myths and archetypal figures drawn from the shared imagination of the surrounding human population, including figures resembling Robin Hood and older, more primal legends. As Steven follows his brother's growing obsession with the wood and its mythic inhabitants, he is drawn into a world where boundaries between story, memory, and reality blur, following the pull of their father's unfinished research.
Where it sits
- Universe: Mythago Wood
- Series: The Mythago Wood Cycle core; position 1 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Robert Holdstock
Awards (verified)
- World Fantasy Award (Best Novel), 1985: won; Co-winner with Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds.
Notes
- From the series record (The Mythago Wood Cycle): The 5 Ryhope Wood novels. Mythago Wood (1984) is registered under its full-novel first-publication year, not the 1981 novella version that originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (expanded into the novel Holdstock actually intends as the series' true text) -- the same discipline applied under this project's textual-integrity rule elsewhere. Internal chronology among Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn and the others is left unpopulated (null), the same treatment used elsewhere for disputed or unrecorded chronologies: sources describe its events as substantially concurrent with/interleaved across the cycle rather than a clean linear slot, and Holdstock's own cycle page does not assert one; the other 4 novels' internal chronology values track publication order, which is the settled default for the rest of the cycle.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series The Mythago Wood Cycle: position 1 of 5: next Lavondyss (1988)
- Internal chronology, within Mythago Wood: position 1 of 4: next Lavondyss (1988)
Sources
- Robert Holdstock official site -- The Mythago Wood Cycle
- Wikipedia -- Mythago Wood
- World Fantasy Convention -- 1985 (11th WFC) award history
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