This booklet bargains new, usually unforeseen, yet continuously interesting graphics of the writers of vintage fairy stories. For years those authors, who wrote from the 16th to the 19th centuries, were both little identified or recognized via skewed, usually sentimentalized biographical details. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm have been solid as exemplars of nationwide virtues; Hans Christian Andersen’s existence became—with his participation—a fairy story in itself. Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, the prim governess who wrote ethical stories for women, had a extra colourful previous than her readers might have imagined, and few humans knew that nineteen-year-old Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy conspired to kill her much-older husband. very important figures approximately whom little is understood, reminiscent of Giovan Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile, are rendered extra thoroughly than ever ahead of. Uncovering what used to be obscured for years and with newly came across facts, participants to this attention-grabbing and much-needed quantity supply a ancient context for Europe’s fairy tales.

“The Teller’s Tale is an important source for these not just in fairy stories, but in addition in comparative literature, women’s writing and didactic texts ... [it] will attract students in any respect degrees and is a key textual content for a person drawn to the minds that introduced us this compelling, even mesmerizing, genre.” — MAKE Literary Magazine

“…intellectually stimulating … overlaying essentially Italian, French, and German writers, this number of essays is thought-provoking and informative.” — Journal of yankee Folklore

“While an anthology with one of these various workforce of writers may well chance wasting coherence as a result of competing voices and writing kinds, that isn't the case the following, because the essays combination seamlessly. without doubt Raynard’s enhancing, translation, and version abilities needs to be praised … for now and probably a long way into the longer term, Raynard’s choice of biographies is as definitive as any reader can wish to discover, a suite of stories every piece as engaging because the ones those writers created.” — Children’s Literature organization Quarterly

“A stellar solid of foreign students, together with Ruth Bottigheimer, Nancy Canepa, and Shawn Jarvis, have produced those graphics. numerous of the entries have been translated by means of the editor, who additionally presents a swish creation. A slim and extremely useful contribution to fairy stories reports, this ebook could be precious to a huge viewers … hugely recommended.” — CHOICE

“…a instruction manual as a way to be of substantial use for instructing and learn … this assortment is welcome, now not least for its foreign succeed in, which should still make the fairy story a very lucrative style for college students of comparative literature.” — Times Literary Supplement

Sophie Raynard is affiliate Professor of French at Stony Brook college, nation collage of recent York.