New Book: The Teller's Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers edited by Sophie Raynard

The Teller's Tale: Lives of the Classic Fairy Tale Writers edited by Sophie Raynard is a new nonfiction fairy tale release. This one looks fascinating, but doesn't accommodate the SurLaLune budget to acquire right now, so no in depth review, just the usual basic info. There is mostly the usual suspects discussed with some extra less known tellers. Looks like an excellent volume overall!

Book description:

This book offers new, often unexpected, but always intriguing portraits of the writers of classic fairy tales. For years these authors, who wrote from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, have been either little known or known through skewed, frequently sentimentalized biographical information. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were cast as exemplars of national virtues; Hans Christian Andersen's life became—with his participation—a fairy tale in itself. Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, the prim governess who wrote moral tales for girls, had a more colorful past than her readers would have imagined, and few people knew that nineteen-year-old Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy conspired to kill her much-older husband. Important figures about whom little is known, such as Giovan Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile, are rendered more completely than ever before. Uncovering what was obscured for years and with newly discovered evidence, contributors to this fascinating and much-needed volume provide a historical context for Europe's fairy tales.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Sophie Raynard

Part I. Emergence

Straparola: Sixteenth-Century Italy
Basile: Seventeenth-Century Italy

Europe’s First Fairy Tales
Ruth B. Bottigheimer

Giovan Francesco Straparola: 1485?–1556?
Ruth B. Bottigheimer

Giambattista Basile: 1575?–1632
Nancy Canepa

Part II. Elaboration

Perrault and the Conteuses Précieuses: Seventeenth-Century France

Sophistication and Modernization of the Fairy Tale: 1690–1709
Nadine Jasmin (translated and adapted by Sophie Raynard)

Charles Perrault: 1628–1703
Yvette Saupé and Jean-Pierre Collinet (translated and adapted by Sophie Raynard)

Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d’Aulnoy: 1650/51?–1705
Nadine Jasmin (translated and adapted by Sophie Raynard)

Catherine Bernard: 1663?–1712
Lewis C. Seifert

Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier de Villandon: 1664–1734
Lewis C. Seifert

Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, Countess de Murat: 1668–1716
Geneviève Patard (translated and adapted by Sophie Raynard)

Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force: 1650?–1724
Lewis C. Seifert

Part III. Exoticism

Galland: Eighteenth-Century France

Antoine Galland: 1646–1715
Manuel Couvreur (translated and adapted by Sophie Raynard)

Part IV. Didacticism

Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont: Eighteenth-Century France

Jeanne-Marie Leprince (or Le Prince) de Beaumont: 1711–1780?
Elisa Biancardi (translated and adapted by Sophie Raynard)

Part V. Traditionalization

Naubert: Late Eighteenth-Century and Early Nineteenth-Century Germany
The Grimms: Nineteenth-Century Germany
Bechstein: Nineteenth-Century Germany

The Legacy of Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth-Century German Female Storytellers
Shawn C. Jarvis

Benedikte Naubert
Shawn C. Jarvis

Jacob Grimm: 1785–1863, Wilhelm Grimm: 1786-1859
Donald R. Hettinga

Ludwig Bechstein
Ruth B. Bottigheimer

Part VI. Sentimentalization

Andersen: Nineteenth Century Denmark

Hans Christian Andersen
Peer E. Soerensen

Lister of Contributors
Index