A survey of the last fifty years in children's fantasy, if it is to be more than a roll-call of those who have distinguished themselves in terms of popularity or critical acclaim, must step back from the fashions for individual books and authors to describe developments at a more general and, as it were, tectonic level. Such a description may be couched in literary terms, of plot, character and narration; or as reflecting changes in the world at large, especially the world as experienced by children; but ideally it should acknowledge and analyse the mutual influence of these factors. Social mores have changed greatly since 1960: can the same be said of children's fantasy fiction?

In British children's fantasy of the early 1960s, there was a distinct preference for real-world settings, usually rural or suburban, inner cities being generally the preserve of realist writers. Child protagonists would typically be white and middle-class, often holidaymakers or newcomers to an area. Indeed, a stock way to begin a book was with the train bringing the protagonist (alone, or with family) to the site of the adventure, as in Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone (1965). And an adventure it generally was, in the sense of being delimited in time, and bracketed by a life marked as recognizably ordinary. The adventure would be undertaken largely without the assistance of adults from the children's own circle and would revolve around, or be precipitated by, contact with a mysterious place, object or person.