Series: British Library Little Books

Whether they breathe fire from above, spit poison on the land, or cause churning maelstroms in the sea, dragons can be found lurking in the margins of illuminated legend around the world. Their global ubiquity means they have many guises: primordial chaos-monsters to the ancients, wise and auspicious guardians in East Asian tradition, formidable foes to be slain by saints...

Trolls have escaped from the black lava wastes of Iceland and the dense pine forests of Scandinavia to take on a new life in the collective global imagination. They may not steal goats and eat people quite so much, but they remain disruptive and dangerous, even if their limited imaginations sometimes make them comic and even quite likeable. Emerging from...