The Book of Fantasy is the English translation of Antología de la literatura fantástica, an anthology of approximately 81 fantastic short stories, fragments, excerpts, and poems edited by Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Silvina Ocampo. It was first published in Argentina in 1940, and revised in 1965 and 1976. Anthony Kerrigan had previously translated a similar work by the same editors, Cuentos breves y extraordinarios (1955) as Extraordinary Tales, published by Herder & Herder in 1971. The 1988 Viking Penguin edition for English-speaking countries includes a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin. According to Le Guin's introduction, the idea and inspiration for this volume came into being "one night in 1937 in Buenos Aires, when Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Silvina Ocampo fell to talking - so Casares tells us - 'about fantastic literature. ..simply a compilation of stories from fantastic literature which seemed to us to be the best.'" Source: Wikipedia (en)