In the far-flung archipelago of Earthsea, dragons fly on the winds of the western isles and a grove of trees is the magical center of the world. A project that spanned her celebrated career, Ursula K. Le Guin’s beloved Earthsea saga has thrilled generations of readers, becoming one of the foundational classics of the fantasy genre. The definitive Library of America edition of Le Guin’s collected works continues with a handsome two-volume set collecting all five novels and nine stories of the complete Earthsea.

This first volume opens with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), the original wizard school fantasy, in which true names are a source of power, not to be shared with others. As the novel unfolds, Ged, a young man from an island far from the center of Earthsea, learns to wield the magic within him. The Tombs of Atuan (1971) tells the story of a young woman’s quest to reclaim her true name, taken from her when she became priestess of the Nameless Ones. And in the National Book Award–winning The Farthest Shore (1972), Ged embarks on a long journey with the teenage Prince Arren to find out why magic seems to be draining out of Earthsea.

As a special feature the volume includes three maps based on Le Guin’s own hand-drawn sketches by award-winning illustrator Olivia Lomenech Gill, who also provides the jacket art. An appendix collects three afterwords to the novels, written by Le Guin in 2012, as well as two early stories that marked her first explorations of Earthsea. Notes by scholar Brian Attebery trace Le Guin’s commentary on the novels across various essays and talks, spotlighting the many allusions in the books to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Brian Attebery, editor, is emeritus professor of English at Idaho State University and a series editor for Perspectives on Fantasy from Bloomsbury. He edited The Norton Book of Science Fiction with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler and is the author of Fantasy: How It Works and Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth, among other books. In 2019 he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor of Fantasy Literature at the University of Glasgow.