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Sword and sorcery (S&S) is a fantasy sub- genre featuring muscular heroes in violent conflict with a variety of villains, chiefly wizards, witches, evil spirits, and other creatures whose powers are—unlike the hero’s— supernatural in origin. The term was suggested by Fritz Leiber to Michael Moorcock in 1961.
But the subgenre is much older than this. Ultimately—like much fantasy—it has its roots in mythology and Classical epics such as Homer's Odyssey, but its immediate progenitors are the swashbuckling tales of Alexandre Dumas ( The Three Musketeers (1844), etc.) and Rafael Sabatini (e.g., Scaramouche (1921), itself rooted in the Italian commedia dell'arteAntoine Watteau's commedia dell'arte player of Pierrot, ca 1718-19, traditionally identified as "Gilles" ( Louvre) Commedia dell'arte ( Italian, meaning "comedy of professional artists") was a form of improvisational theater which began in the 16th centur) - although these all lack the supernatural element - and early fantasy fiction such as E. R. Eddison's The Worm OuroborosThe Worm Ouroboros (1922) is a heroic high fantasy novel by Eric Rucker Eddison. There has been a recent UK paperback edition in the Fantasy Masterworks series. A paperback edition was reissued in Bridgewater, New Jersey, by Replica Books in 1999 with ISB (1922) and Lord Dunsany's The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth (1910). But S&S proper really began in the pulp fantasy magazines.
Seminal S&S
Seminal S&S books and series include
Other pulp fantasy fiction - such as Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars stories - has a similar feel to S&S, but, because alien science replaces the supernatural, is better described as science fantasy.
S&S Heroines
Despite the early work of C. L. Moore and others, S&S has had a very male bias. Female characters are too often distressed damsels to be rescued or protected. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthology series (1984 onwards) redressed the balance. Bradley encouraged female writers and protagonists: the stories feature skillful swordswomen and powerful sorceresses. The series was immensely popular and Bradley was editing the final volume at the time of her death. Today, active female characters who participate equally with the male heroes in the stories are a regular feature in modern S&S stories even if a major reason is sex appeal.
Although a minor character in one of Howard's Conan stories, Red Sonja of Rogatine was a popular female S&S character in a comic book series Roy Thomas, a series of novels by David C. Smith and Richard Tierney, and an unsuccessful film, Red Sonja (1985), directed by Richard Fleischer.
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