[1][2][3][4] The combination provides the writer with a platform for classic fantasy tropes,[5] quixotic plot-elements, and unusual characters—without demanding the creation of an entire imaginary world.
Precursors of urban fantasy are found in popular fiction of the 19th century[6] - and the present use of the term dates back to the 1970s[7][3] - but much of its audience was established in the 1930s-50s with the success of light supernatural fare in the movies (and later on TV).
Authors may use current urban myths, borrow fictional technologies, or even invent occult practices, as well as using established supernatural characters and events from folklore, literature, film, or comics.
The period in which the action occurs may be the fairly recent past or the near future, but will typically require merely only casual historical or other special knowledge from the reader.
"[21] During the late Romantic era, writers of sensational fiction (including Mary Shelley, Dickens, Hoffmann, Le Fanu, Hugo, Poe, Wilkie Collins, Stoker, &c.) wrote melodramas to explore social anxieties due to population shifts from farms into industrial centers,[22] novel technologies, and fear of 'foreign' immigrants.
[23] Re-imagining the contemporary universe by manipulating one or more social/technical realities gave us popular works by Jules Verne, as well as Doyle's Professor Challenger stories.
Karel Čapek, Aldous Huxley, and even Sinclair Lewis (in his novel It Can't Happen Here) all wrote adventure stories that were post-apocalyptic, and dystopian.
Around the same time, popular mail-delivered periodicals appeared in Europe[24][25][26] and the Americas (The Saturday Evening Post (1821), Godey's Lady's Book (1830), and Harper's Weekly (1857)).
[31] Robert deGraff founded Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books in 1939, he distributed not only to the 2,800 US bookstores, but also in more than a hundred thousand drugstores, news-stands, 5-&-10s, cigar stores, groceries, and diners.
In 1899, Harper's Weekly editor John Kendrick Bangs altered fantasy parameters with The Enchanted Type-Writer (a series of humorous short-stories supposedly typed by the ghost of 18th century writer James Boswell) - introducing a benign revenant in a contemporary setting.
Writer Charles G. Finney's celebrated[33] 1935 experimental novel The Circus of Dr. Lao placed mythical creatures in a contemporary setting to examine the society in a small Arizona town.
[35] These early tales, however, differ from current urban fantasy - they present supernatural beings and acts as unnatural, aberrant, and a possible danger to ordinary citizens.
That same year, Irish-American Leonard Wibberley published Mrs Searwood's Secret Weapon, about an elderly British widow haunted by the ghost of a Powhatan warrior during the London Blitz.
[37] Herman Cohen's teen-horror films for American International Pictures commenced in 1957 with I Was a Teenage Werewolf, combining supernatural characters with the mundane popular post WW2 teen-culture.
[41] Also in 1968, the English translation of Italo Calvino's short-story collection "Le cosmicomiche" made his fantastic tales built around minor scientific details available to the Anglo-American appetite for the new urban fantasy.
We're given a vivid description, details and foibles, before the town is populated with a cast of characters..."[44] Anne Rice published Interview with the Vampire (a re-working of her own late-60s short story) in 1976 to strikingly mixed critical reviews.
In the cinema, the re-write of Dan Aykroyd's original 1982 science fiction comedy script for Ghostbusters by Harold Ramis replaced the futuristic setting for present day New York City.
[51] An article in Tor.com has stated that "some say, Urban Fantasy was born in Bordertown," which provided "young, beginning writers like Charles de Lint and Emma Bull" with a platform.
These tales chronicled adventures of a hardboiled detective in a contemporary fantasy world, and were among the earliest to use a fantastic "underworld" in place of the criminals and thugs of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and their followers.
While adult urban fantasy novels may stand-alone (like Mulengro by Charles de Lint or Emma Bull's War for the Oaks), the economics of the market favor series characters, and genre-crossing allows sales along multiple lines.
Many urban-fantasy novels are told via a first-person narrative, and often feature mythological beings, romance, and female protagonists who are involved in law enforcement or vigilantism.
[56] Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan novels, also regarded as inspirational works, feature a bounty-hunting "witch-born" demon who battles numerous supernatural foes.
The Jaz Parks series, by Jennifer Rardin, follows the titular Central Intelligence Agency operative and her vampire boss as they combat supernatural threats to national security.
[68] Night Huntress, a series by Jeaniene Frost, centers on a half-vampire named Catherine and a vampire bounty hunter called Bones, who gradually become lovers while battling the undead.
[72] The Immortals series, by Alyson Noël, follows a girl who gains special abilities after recovering from an accident, and also grows close to a mysterious new boy at her school.
[76] Bruce Coville and Jane Yolen collaborated on Armageddon Summer which places a standard teen romance in the middle of an imagined apocalyptic cult.
[77] The House of Night series, by P. C. and Kristin Cast, presents a school where future vampires are disciplined while on the path to transformation, during which several romantic conflicts and other clashes ensue.
Possibly the best-known urban fantasy series for children are P. L. Travers' low-fantasy Mary Poppins stories, set in London between the World Wars.
Among the tales to be adapted are Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series,[91] Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson stories,[92] and Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely.
Aside from popular ghost and horror films from the 1930s-60s, well-known examples include the 1992 series Highlander and the TV adaptation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is regarded as a seminal work of the genre.