Actually, not that much -- the big explosion in Celtic fantasy was around then -- not just Kit, but Guy Gavriel Kay, Patricia Keneally Morrison, and various Arthur books (though most of those were more following the French tradition with a few famous Celts thrown in, ie The Mists of Avalon). Prior to that, I can only think of Evangeline Walton (and parts of Tolkien, but it was well-disguised) writing pure Celtic stuff. There were children's books but they were mostly either retellings of legends or set in a modern world with folkloric incursions (The Owl Service, for instance). I used to teach a course on this, for my sins. The success of these series (plus Mists of Avalon) fuelled a much bigger wave from c.1990. Which is, I have to say, about when I stopped reading the stuff, by and large, as it was getting more and more recursive, and more and more riddled with modern sensibilities and wish-fulfilment around religion, feminism, psychic powers and so on. I remember the first of Kit's novel's coming out, in fact, and it was very fresh and different -- the other Celtic stuff from around the same time was very much more Arthur influenced and less based on genuinely early materials. I'm a bit of a nerd about this, alas: being a Celtic historian, these books get mentioned to me a lot.
Well, The Dark is Rising, which is technically kids' fantasy, springs to mind, and then there's Marion Zimmer Bradley as referenced by both yourself and Erin. Mostly, see Erin's comment for my feelings on this. Celtic inspired naming conventions feel to me like the single most banal choice in fantasy fiction - moreso even than Germanic - so I found it comical that this was being cited in the comments (by multiple people, not just Kerr) as in some way 'different' or original - and I really don't care how long she's been doing it. That's all.
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I'm a bit of a nerd about this, alas: being a Celtic historian, these books get mentioned to me a lot.
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