Jirel of Joiry is a fictional character created by American writer C. L. Moore, who appeared in a series of sword and sorcery stories published first in the pulp horror/fantasy magazine Weird Tales. Jirel is the proud, tough, arrogant and beautiful ruler of her own domain — apparently somewhere in medieval France. Her adventures continually involve her in dangerous brushes with the supernatural.
These stories are among the first to show the influence of Robert E. Howard on sword and sorcery; they also introduced a female protagonist to the genre.[1][2]
Moore's Jirel stories include the following:
These stories, except for "Quest of the Starstone", appear in the collection Jirel of Joiry (1969), and in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks compendium Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams (2002). All six appear in a collected edition under Paizo Publishing's "Planet Stories" imprint, compiled under the title Black God's Kiss.
She has been described as one of the first strong female characters in the fantasy genre, and "the world's first female sword-and-sorcery hero".[3]
Despite being a female character, her masculine traits have led to her being analyzed in the context of gender bending fiction.[4][5]
"Jirel of Joiry", a 1985 filk song by Mercedes Lackey and Leslie Fish, appears on the album Murder, Mystery and Mayhem.[citation needed]
