<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Fantasy of Manners (sometimes called Mannerpunk) is a subgenre of fantasy fiction that focuses on social (and sometimes political) interactions among the characters, with magic or other fantastic elements taking a subordinate role.

The term was coined by Ellen Kushner and introduced to critical discussion in the essay "The Manner of Fantasy" by Donald G. Keller, in The New York Review of Science Fiction (April, 1991). Keller used the term to describe a class of fantasy novels that arose in the 1980's that were as heavily influenced by the works of Jane Austen and the historical novels of Dorothy Dunnett as they were by traditional fantasy themes, with heavy doses of 1960's pop culture (especially the Beatles and The Man from U.N.C.L.E), folk ballads, and fairy tales. In retrospect, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner is generally considered the canonical Fantasy of Manners novel; other early works cited by Keller in his essay include Delia Sherman's Through a Brazen Mirror, Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia, and Sherwood Smith's Wren to the Rescue. All of these novels share a focus on the process of growing up, and particularly of cloaking the heartlessly literal honesty of childhood and fairy tales in the deadly serious yet ambiguous social disguises required to navigate the adult world.

The shorthand term "Mannerpunk" (sometimes considered affectionate and sometimes condescending or at least tongue-in-cheek) is thought to have been coined by Greg Cox by analogy with cyberpunk.

In the years since the appearance of the original essay, the term has gradually come to be used particulary for fantasies set in an alternate English Regency.