Editing The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (section)

==Publication==
Garner sent his debut novel to the publishing company [[William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd|Collins]], where it was picked up by the company's head, Sir William Collins, who was on the lookout for new fantasy novels following on from the recent commercial and critical success of [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' (1954–55).<ref name="Lake 2010 317">[[#Lak10|Lake 2010]]. p. 317.</ref> Garner, who would go on to become a personal friend of Collins, would later relate that "Billy Collins saw a title with funny-looking words in it on the stockpile, and he decided to publish it."<ref name="Lake 2010 317"/> 
{{Quote box
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|quote     = "I could not have hoped for the mood of the book to be better expressed. George Adamson has caught it exactly. Fenodyree is just as I imagined him and the eyes are the best part of the jacket. I am delighted."
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|source    = Alan Garner in a letter to the publisher, regarding cover artist George Adamson<ref>See http://georgewadamson.com/weirdstone.html.</ref>
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Following its release in 1960, ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'' proved to be a "resounding success... both critically and commercially", later being described as "a tour de force of the imagination, a novel that showed almost every writer who came afterwards what it was possible to achieve in novels ostensibly published for children."<ref name="Lake 2010 317-318">[[#Lak10|Lake 2010]]. pp. 316–317.</ref> For the book's republication in 1963, Garner made several alterations to the text, excising what Neil Philip called "extraneous clauses, needless adjectives and flabby phrases." In his opinion, this "second text is taut where the first one is slack, precise where the first is woolly."<ref name="Philip 43-44">[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. pp. 43–44.</ref> Nonetheless, as the novel was republished by the US market by [[Puffin Books]] as an Armada Lion paperback in 1971, the 1960 text was once more used.<ref name="Philip 43-44"/>

===50th anniversary reprint===
[[File:Weirdstone of Brisingamen 50.jpg|thumb|150px|The special 50th anniversary publication]]
In the fiftieth anniversary edition of ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'', published by [[HarperCollins]] in 2010, several notable British fantasy novelists praised Garner and his work. [[Susan Cooper]] related that "The power and range of Alan Garner's astounding talent has grown with every book he's written", whilst [[David Almond]] called him one of Britain's "greatest writers" whose works "really matter".<ref>[[#Pul10|Pullman et al 2010]]. p. 02.</ref> [[Philip Pullman]], the author of the ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' trilogy, went further when he remarked that:

<blockquote>Garner is indisputably the great originator, the most important British writer of fantasy since Tolkien, and in many respects better than Tolkien, because deeper and more truthful ... Any country except Britain would have long ago recognised his importance, and celebrated it with postage stamps and statues and street-names. But that's the way with us: our greatest prophets go unnoticed by the politicians and the owners of media empires. I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admiration.<ref name="Pullman et al 2010">[[#Pul10|Pullman et al 2010]]. p. 01.</ref></blockquote>

Another British fantasy author, [[Neil Gaiman]], said "Garner's fiction is something special" in that it was "smart and challenging, based in the here and the now, in which real English places emerged from the shadows of folklore, and in which people found themselves walking, living and battling their way through the dreams and patterns of myth."<ref name="Pullman et al 2010"/> Praise also came from Nick Lake, the editorial director of [[HarperCollins]] Children's Books, who proclaimed that "Garner is, quite simply, one of the greatest and most influential writers this country has ever produced."<ref>[[#Lak10|Lake 2010]]. pp. 315–316.</ref>