George Raymond Richard Martin, A Game of Thrones

Lars Johnson (Cornell University)

Ed. by Dimitra Fimi, University of Glasgow
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1996

Places

United States (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Fantasy

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

In 1991, George R.R. Martin began working on what he thought “might be a short story” about some children finding a litter of direwolf pups (Martin 2018). This short story grew quite a bit in the following years though, evolving into

A Song of Ice and Fire

(1996-present), Martin’s as of yet unfinished epic fantasy series which currently clocks in at over 5,000 pages. The first novel in the series,

A Game of Thrones

, was published in 1996 and serves as the namesake for the immensely popular HBO adaptation of the story,

Game of Thrones

(2011-2019).

A Game of Thrones

was met with acclaim upon its publication, and Martin won a Hugo award for the novella

Blood of the Dragon

(1996), which features the Daenerys chapters from

A Game of Thrones

. While

A Song of Ice and Fire

had a solid base…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2334 words

Citation: Johnson, Lars. "A Game of Thrones". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 May 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39018, accessed 20 April 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

George Raymond Richard Martin, A Game of Thrones

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback