SOURCE: "A Long Day's Dying: The Elves of J. R. R. Tolkien and Sylvia Townsend Warner," in Death and the Serpent: Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Carl B. Yoke and Donald M. Hassler, Greenwood Press, 1985, pp. 57-70.

In the excerpt below, Crossley compares the elfin worlds of Warner and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Among the folklore traditions on the origin of elves is the notion that they are the lost children of Adam and Lilith, born before the fall in Eden and therefore exempt from the punishment of death, but born as well outside the framework of redemption and therefore also disenfranchised from the promise of a life beyond the end of the world. One paradox of the "fortunate fall" for human beings is that while the penalty for original sin is heavy, the unanticipated gift of a second life is a measure of the...