Wall of Serpents

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**Title** **Wall of Serpents**
first edition of Wall of Serpents
Author	L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt
Cover artist	Ed Emshwiller
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Harold Shea
Genre(s)	Fantasy short stories
Publisher	Avalon Books
Released	1960
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	223 pp
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	The Castle of Iron
Followed by	The Enchanter Reborn

Wall of Serpents is a collection of two classic fantasy short stories by science fiction and fantasy authors L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, the third volume in their Harold Shea series. It was first published in hardcover by Avalon Books in 1960, and in paperback by Dell Books in 1979. It has been reprinted by a number of other publishers since its first appearance. A 1980 edition published by Sphere Books was retitled The Enchanter Completed. More recently it has been combined with earlier books in the series in the omnibus edition The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989). It has also been published in Italian and German. The pieces were originally published in the magazines Fantasy Fiction and Beyond Fantasy Fiction in the issues for June, 1953 and October, 1954.

The Harold Shea stories are parallel world tales in which universes where magic works coexist with our own, and in which those based on the mythologies, legends, and literary fantasies of our world and can be reached by aligning one's mind to them by a system of symbolic logic. In the stories collected as Wall of Serpents, the authors' protagonist Harold Shea visits two such worlds, those of Finnish and Irish mythology.