list of dragons in literature.
Before 1900
Antiquity (until fifth century AD)
• Epic of Gilgamesh (2150-1400 BCE): Humbaba, a dragon slain by Gilgamesh.
• Book of Job (5th century BC?): leviathan (chapter 41).
• Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica (3rd century BC): the dragon guarding the golden fleece (Book 2), and the dragon whose teeth can be sown like seed to make an army grow (Book 3).
•Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca (after 1st century BC): the sea monster Perseus slays to rescue Andromeda, and the dragon guarding the apples of the Hesperides (Book 2).
• John of Patmos, Book of Revelation (1st century AD): Satan as a dragon (chapters 12-13, 16:13, 20:2).
Middle Ages
• Beowulf (8th - 11th century): The unnamed dragon from the end of the Old English epic, which dies by the combined efforts of Wiglaf and Beowulf.
• Life of Efflamm (late 11th-12th century): The dragon defeated by Efflam and Arthur.
• Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae (c.1136): the dragons in the underground lake whose fighting upsets Uther Pendragon's tower, as revealed by Merlin.
• Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend (c. 1260): the dragon slain by St. George.
• Fáfnismál in the Poetic Edda (by 13th century): Fáfnir.
• Völsunga saga (late 13th century): Fáfnir.
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century): The "worms" Sir Gawain battles.
• Amadis de Gaula (14th century): Endriago, a monster Amadis battles.
• Jacques de Longuyon, Les Voeux du Paon (1312): Melusine, a beautiful woman who seems faithful but refuses to take communion in church. When confronted, she turns into a dragon and flees. She has been depicted in Russian art of the 18th century as a woman's head on a dragon's body.
Early modern period
• Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590): Unnamed dragon slain by Redcrosse knight (Book 1, Canto 11-12).
• Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1604): The dragons that draw Faustus's chariot.
• Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy, The Green Serpent (1698): A handsome king turned into a green dragon by enchantment.
Nineteenth century
• Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, "The Two Brothers" (1812): A seven-headed dragon who demands maidens in one of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
• Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky" in Through the Looking-Glass (1871): The Jabberwock, a fearsome dragonlike beast with "jaws that bite", "claws that catch", and "eyes of flame."
• Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876): Fafner.
• William Morris, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (1877): Fafnir.
• Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon (1898): A dragon who does not want to act like a dragon.
Twentieth centuryEdit
By publication date of first installment in a series.
1900sEdit
• L. Frank Baum, Land of Oz series (1900): dragons appear in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908), Tik-Tok of Oz (1914), and The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918).
1910sEdit
• Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, "Dragon: the Old Potter's Tale" (1919): a vague shadowy image which observers believe is a dragon ascending to heaven.
1920sEdit
• E. Nesbit, The Last of the Dragons (1925): the last dragon on earth, who is tired of being expected to fight a prince for a princess, and becomes the princess's pet instead. Drinks petrol ("that's what does a dragon good, sir") and, at his own request, is eventually transformed by the king into the first aeroplane.
1930sEdit
• C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress (1933): the cold Northern dragon, slain by John, and the hot Southern dragon, slain by Vertue. The Northern dragon is so greedy that his anxiety for his gold hardly lets him sleep. He recalls eating his wife, saying, "worm grows not to dragon till he eats worm", a loose translation of the Latin saying, Serpens, nisi serpentem comederit, non fit draco. The Guide explains that dragons always live alone because they have become dragons by eating their own kind. Lewis reiterates the notion of cannibalistic dragons in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (see below).
