Women in Folklore Month: Iona Opie

Iona Opie is noted for her pioneering work on children's folklore and games. Much of her best known work was done in partnership with her late husband, Peter Opie (1918–1982). Born in 1923, Iona is still living and has continued their work on her own since Peter's death.

My favorite short bio for Iona--because it is whimsical--appeared in My Very First Mother Goose from Candlewick Press:

Iona Opie has dedicated her life to collecting and preserving children's rhymes as an art form. "I suppose my message in life is 'Nursery rhymes are good for you.' And the sooner you start, the better. I always have one myself every morning. I just open a nursery rhyme book at random. This morning I read:

Taffy was born on a
moonshiney night.

His head in a pipskin,
his heels upright.

You see, if you acquire a nursery rhyme-ical attitude, you're not at all put out by life's little bumps and bruises--they just seem funny and entirely normal."

Here is a more straightforward bio adapted from FAQS.org:

Iona Opie (b. 1923) and Peter Mason Opie (1918–1982) were British collectors, publishers, and archivists of children's folklore. Peter Opie was president of the anthropology section of the British Association in 1962–1963 and of the British Folklore Society in 1963–1964. The husband-and-wife team began their research together in 1944. Their first major work was The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951; 2nd edition, 1997), a collection of more than five hundred rhymes, songs, nonsense jingles, and lullabies. For each item the known facts about origin, variants, non-English equivalents, and earlier publication are stated. In the introduction, the Opies outline a suggestion for a general categorization of children's rhymes. This volume stands out as one of the standard collections of English-language children's rhymes.

The path-breaking The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (1959) efficiently refuted the idea that the growing impact of mass media and the entertainment industry would inevitably extinguish children's own, genuine traditions. Leaving the parent-guarded nurseries behind, this unexpurgated collection of jokes, riddles, rhymes, rituals, beliefs, and secret spells provides a vivid testimony of multitudinous children's traditions thriving in streets and school yards. The material is grouped into categories and presented together with folkloristic and historical comments, as well as international comparisons.

Unlike many of their predecessors, the Opies collected schoolchildren's lore directly from six- to fourteen-year-olds and not from adults reminiscing about their own childhood traditions. Their method of work foreshadowed a paradigm shift in folklore research in the 1960s that emphasized the study of contemporary folklore and fieldwork among representatives of a culture rather than text analyses of archival material. They conducted large-scale surveys during the 1950s and 1960s, with contributions from 135 state schools throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, and tape-recorded children in playgrounds all over Britain during the 1970s. The mass of information collected provided material for a further three books, all on children's games: Children's Games in Street and Playground (1969), The Singing Game (1985), and Children's Games with Things (1997), the last two of which Iona Opie produced after her husband's death, as well as publishing her own playground observations as The People in the Playground (1993). Aside from their work on children's folklore the Opies also dealt with fairy tales, most notably in The Classic Fairy Tales (1974). The Opies' inspiring example contributed to the emergence of children's folklore as a thriving field of research within folklore studies.

The Opie Collection of Children's Literature, housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, was originated by the Opies as a private research library in 1944. Upon Peter Opie's death in 1982, Iona Opie decided to place the collection, then amounting to twenty thousand titles, in a public institution. The transfer to the Bodleian library was made possible by a national fund-raising campaign (led by Prince Charles) and by Opie's donation of half the collection. The largest single category is made up of twelve thousand bound volumes of children's stories and nursery rhymes. Other substantial categories include primers, alphabets and other instruction books, chapbooks, comics, and children's magazines. Some eight hundred of the titles were published before 1800, including among other rare books a 1706 edition of The Arabian Nights and an early printing of Robinson Crusoe. The collection is accessible to the public in microfiche form.

The Classic Fairy Tales was the most influential of their books upon me personally. It was the first book I ever read that offered backgrounds on fairy tales, offering the earliest known English language versions of the tales as well as many wonderful illustrations. I discovered it when I was first researching fairy tales for the school project that eventually became SurLaLune. I bought it, too, with my meager student funds and it provided some of the earliest inspiration for what the site has become.



These days more Opie titles grace my shelves, such as The Oxford Book of Children's Verse and the seminal The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.


I also own A Dictionary of Superstitions which Iona coedited with Moira Tatem.


Even more appear on my wishlist such as The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren and Children's Games with Things: Marbles, Fivestones, Throwing and Catching, Gambling, Hopscotch, Chucking and Pitching, Ball-Bouncing, Skipping, Tops and Tipcat.


Another well-known Opie title is I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild's Pocket Book, illustrated by the ever popular Maurice Sendak.


Review from Publishers Weekly:

This inspired collaboration marries the earliest work of the Opies--British folklorists who for four decades charted the territory of childhood through schoolchildren's language--with new illustrations that show Sendak at his finest. With the shape and heft of a handbook, the volume is, in effect, a primer of children's humor and lore. Many rhymes are instantly familiar; others are less so--especially those with a British tinge. Merely perusing the Contents page, with such tantalizing listings as "Guile-Malicious" and "Guile-Innocent," is a delectable exercise. Because the Opies' particular genius lay in mapping the verbal turf of children themselves--and not adults' often sanitized versions--the rhymes they collected portray not only the playfulness of childhood but its occasional crudeness and cruelty as well. For the same reason, they exude spontaneity and energy. Sendak's illustrations pick up this energy and add their own. His characters are, variously, mischievous, sprightly, gnarly and spectral, and possessed of a seemingly endless array of expressions. Appealing and immediately accessible, they are drawn in simple, clean lines that recall his early work and painted with a broad palette that ranges from rich russets to soft indigos. The text and art are seamlessly interactive: small figures chase each other around the type; larger illustrations mingle images from several verses. And Sendak's ability to create provocative psychological dimension is in full evidence as well. The sequence illustrating the ubiquitous "Rain, rain, go away" is accompanied by a series showing a child's mother gradually transformed into a protective tree; the figure pelted in "Sticks and stones" is a skeleton itself. The republication of these rhymes brings the Opies' work full circle; the book seems a satisfying culmination of Sendak's gifts as well.

The Opies have amassed one of the most impressive collections of children's literature and ephemera which is now housed by the Bodleian Library, Oxford University as the Opie Collection, but the Indiana University Lilly Library also houses The Peter & Iona Opie Collection of Folklore and Related Topics.

And please note that I didn't even list all of Iona Opie's work here. These are the highlights and most important works. Her contribution to the field of children's folklore is astounding and so she had to be included in this month's salute to women in folklore.

Women in Folklore: Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston has become famous for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, but African-American folklore was Zora Neale Hurston's first love.

First, I'll offer a little bit about this fascinating woman from the biography on her Zora Neale Hurston website:

In 1917, she turned up in Baltimore; by then, she was 26 years old and still hadn't finished high school. Needing to present herself as a teenager to qualify for free public schooling, she lopped 10 years off her life--giving her age as 16 and the year of her birth as 1901. Once gone, those years were never restored: From that moment forward, Hurston would always present herself as at least 10 years younger than she actually was.

.....

By 1935, Hurston--who'd graduated from Barnard College in 1928 [at age 37]--had published several short stories and articles, as well as a novel (Jonah's Gourd Vine) and a well-received collection of black Southern folklore (Mules and Men). But the late 1930s and early '40s marked the real zenith of her career. She published her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937; Tell My Horse, her study of Caribbean Voodoo practices, in 1938; and another masterful novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, in 1939. When her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, was published in 1942, Hurston finally received the well-earned acclaim that had long eluded her. That year, she was profiled in Who's Who in America, Current Biography and Twentieth Century Authors. She went on to publish another novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, in 1948.

Hurston published two folklore collections, which I'll highlight below with descriptions.

Publisher's description for Mules and Men:

Mules and Men is a treasury of black America's folklore as collected by a famous storyteller and anthropologist who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery. Returning to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to gather material, Zora Neale Hurston recalls "a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the storytelling." Set intimately within the social context of black life, the stories, "big old lies," songs, Vodou customs, and superstitions recorded in these pages capture the imagination and bring back to life the humor and wisdom that is the unique heritage of African Americans.

And from her official website:

"Simply the most exciting book on black folklore and culture I have ever read."
- Roger D. Abrahams

Mules and Men is the first great collection of black America's folk world. In the 1930's, Zora Neale Hurston returned to her "native village" of Eatonville, Florida to record the oral histories, sermons and songs, dating back to the time of slavery, which she remembered hearing as a child. In her quest, she found herself and her history throughout these highly metaphorical folk-tales, "big old lies," and the lyrical language of song. With this collection, Zora Neale Hurston has come to reveal'and preserve'a beautiful and important part of American culture.

Review from Publishers Weekly for Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States:

Although Hurston is better known for her novels, particularly Their Eyes Were Watching God, she might have been prouder of her anthropological field work. In 1927, with the support of Franz Boas, the dean of American anthropologists, Hurston traveled the Deep South collecting stories from black laborers, farmers, craftsmen and idlers. These tales featured a cast of characters made famous in Joel Chandler Harris's bowdlerized Uncle Remus versions, including John (related, no doubt, to High John the Conqueror), Brer Fox and various slaves. But for Hurston these stories were more than entertainments; they represented a utopia created to offset the sometimes unbearable pressures of disenfranchisement: "Brer Fox, Brer Deer, Brer 'Gator, Brer Dawg, Brer Rabbit, Ole Massa and his wife were walking the earth like natural men way back in the days when God himself was on the ground and men could talk with him." Hurston's notes, which somehow got lost, were recently rediscovered in someone else's papers at the Smithsonian. Divided into 15 categories ("Woman Tales," "Neatest Trick Tales," etc.), the stories as she jotted them down range from mere jokes of a few paragraphs to three-page episodes. Many are set "in slavery time," with "massa" portrayed as an often-gulled, but always potentially punitive, presence. There are a variety of "how come" and trickster stories, written in dialect. Acting the part of the good anthropologist, Hurston is scrupulously impersonal, and, as a result, the tales bear few traces of her inimitable voice, unlike Tell My Horse, her classic study of Haitian voodoo. Though this may limit the book's appeal among general readers, it is a boon for Hurston scholars and may, as Kaplan says in her introduction, establish Hurston's importance as an African-American folklorist.

She also wrote a study of voodoo, Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica.

Publisher's description:

Based on acclaimed author Zora Neale Hurston's personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica—where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer during her visits in the 1930s—Tell My Horse is a fascinating firsthand account of the mysteries of Voodoo. An invaluable resource and remarkable guide to Voodoo practices, rituals, and beliefs, it is a travelogue into a dark, mystical world that offers a vividly authentic picture of ceremonies, customs, and superstitions.

A self-made, renaissance woman from a time when the color of her skin worked very much against her in society, but didn't stop her from following her passions and leaving a legacy...

Women in Folklore Month: Elenore Plaisted Abbott

Today I am focusing on an illustrator of fairy tales. One of my favorites is Elenore Plaisted Abbott who I found by chance several years ago.


From The Rose Valley Museum and Historical Society listing about Abbott:

Elenore Plaisted Abbott was a nationally known illustrator, scenic designer, and artist (both landscape and portrait). She was born in Lincoln, Maine. She studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She also studied in Paris, where her work was exhibited at the Academie des Beaux Arts. Upon her return in 1899 she enrolled at the Drexel Institute, where she studied with Howard Pyle. Sometime later (between 1916 and 1919), Elenore wrote to Pyle’s secretary that the only work she was glad to have done was under Mr. Pyle.

She gained a strong reputation as an illustrator. She would take photographs for later oil paintings, something illustrators were known to do. Her work appeared in many magazines, such as Scribner’s, Saturday Evening Post, and Harper’s Magazine. She also did illustrations for many books, including Kidnapped and Treasure Island (Robert Lewis Stevenson), Swiss Family Robinson (Johann David Wyss), Old Fashioned Girl (Louisa May Alcott) and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Evan Nagel Wolf, in the 1919 supplement of International Studio, wrote “Elenore Abbott loves her fairy tales, and no child who receives such a book will be disappointed... Elenore Abbott is not on the surface a clever artist; her active, vigorous yet idealist’s mind is brought into subjection and guides the long sensitive fingers that hold the water color brush.”

Abbott avoided the sentimentality that pervaded many of the illustrations by women during this time period, but retained the romanticism that appeals to me. I also loved the endpapers to her book, shown below, which I scanned and spent a significant amount of time cleaning up from their yellowed and fading state.


Of course, there is a Elenore Plaisted Abbott page on SurLaLune as well as a CafePress shop filled with products featuring her illustrations. I also chose her Cinderella as my favorite pair of shoes on Zazzle. I own a pair and love them.

Women in Folklore Month: Robin McKinley

There's been a fun blogging trend the past few weeks among authors in response to Neil Gaiman's open letter to Michael Moorcock on Tor.com on February 23rd: I’m mostly your fault, Michael Moorcock. The result is many authors blogging about whose fault they are, in other words, who influenced or continues to inform their own writing.


Well, for anyone reading or writing in the fairy tale genre, there are several women who have inspired younger authors. I have several on my list for this month--arguably just about anyone I highlight this month could be on the list actually--but today I am obviously going to discuss Robin McKinley if you read the header.


I've shared the story of discovering Robin McKinley's Beauty, but I will do so again. I had read The Hero and the Crown during a severe bout of the flu one day* and went searching for more books by McKinley at the bookstore. There weren't many at the time, just The Blue Sword, Beauty and Hero as well as the elusive The Door in the Hedge. (McKinley's were some of the first books I ever special ordered in those days before the internet.) I was gobsmacked to discover Beauty on the shelf, a retelling of my favorite fairy tale. I snatched up the lone, rather tattered copy and didn't let it go until I had to pay for it. Then I rushed home and devoured it. Bliss!


I was thrilled to find a novel about a fairy tale. I had left fairy tales alone for several years, thinking I was too old for them as many people do, but Beauty brought me back at the age of 14 and I never looked back. Essentially it is why we are here reading this today, for I had other career goals, but have kept circling back to fairy tales and children's literature all the time. Of course, several other influences have helped, but McKinley headed me in the right direction.


And when I finally owned a copy of The Door in the Hedge with its retellings of Frog Prince and Twelve Dancing Princesses, I was even more inspired. In truth, McKinley was my introduction to Twelve Dancing Princesses as a fairy tale. Then Deerskin followed a few years later. It was a tough book, but inspiring and a little educational.


Do I sound sufficiently fan girl? I thought I might as well since just about everyone knows who she is and is familiar with her work. Since she is very much still living and writing, I won't say much here. You can learn more about her on her website at Robin McKinley. She also keeps a blog of her own with forays into English living, bell-ringing included.


So whether you are a fan or not, McKinley's influence on the trend of publishing fairy tale retellings is profound. It had been done before, but her skill and success helped to solidify it as a subgenre that stays strong today and has assisted the careers of Shannon Hale, Sarah Beth Durst, Donna Jo Napoli, Heather Tomlinson to name only a few with hopes of not offending. (Extra credit to Terri Windling, too, but she'll get her own day this month.)


*Only two books have made illness completely livable--Jane Eyre and Hero and the Crown--to the point where I was rushing through the physical demands of the illness to quickly return to my book. I was sick, sick, sick when reading both of these for the first time, but I was only thrilled to have the excuse to be home reading, never mind the putrid and disgusting. Literature can be the best medicine!

Women in Folklore Month: Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy

It would be impossible for me to not devote a post to Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baronne d'Aulnoy this month. After all, she is one of the reasons we talk about "fairy tales" instead of "wonder tales" or "märchen." The term used to label her stories, "contes de fée," literally translates to "fairy tales." And, yes, her own tales often had fairies in them, so it was not the misnomer it is today.

In the late 1600s, the French Salons were filled with fairy tale writing, primarily by women writers. Many of the tales were influenced by oral traditions, but most did not end up influencing oral tradition directly. The most prolific and influential author was Marie-Catherine D'Aulnoy. She published four volumes of fairy tales. Her most famous tale today is The White Cat. Her work influenced that of Charles Perrault and others.

From Terri Windling's article, Les Contes des Fées: The Literary Fairy Tales of France:

D’Aulnoy, as her contemporaries note, was a major force behind the fairy tale vogue and the first to publisher her salon tales, but she was soon followed by a number of other writers (Mme. de Murat, Mlle. L’H’éritier, Mlle. Bernard, Mlle. de la Force, etc.), most of whom knew and were influenced by each other to varying degrees. Although d’Aulnoy’s name is largely left out of the canon (you’ll find numerous Perrault collections, for example, and none devoted to d’Aulnoy), her tales are still retold today, republished in modern bowdlerized forms: The White Cat, The White Deer, Green Snake, The Yellow Dwarf, Bluecrest, The Royal Ram, and other magical works.

Madame d’Aulnoy’s own history is almost as fantastical as any of her stories. Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville was born in Normandy in 1650, and received a modest convent education . . . arranged for her by Francois de la Motte, Baron d’Aulnoy, a wealthy aristocrat who was thirty years her senior. When Marie-Catherine was 15 or 16, the Baron abducted her from the convent (with the connivance of her father, who profited financially) and a forced marriage ensued -- from which, in that time and place, there was no possibility of divorce. The Baron was famed for his dissolute habits, including drunkenness, an addiction to gambling, and sexual irregularities. Three long years later, it looked as though the girl might be freed from her odious husband when the Baron was arrested and charged with a crime of high treason against the king. Then the two men who had implicated the Baron recanted their testimony under torture. These men were discovered to be the lovers of the young Baroness and her beautiful mother, and it was now believed that the whole affair had been cooked up between the four of them. The Baron was released, the men were executed, and d’Aulnoy and her mother fled to Spain. The two adventurous women spent the next several years traveling the Continent, and may have been spying for Louis XIV as a way of regaining his favor. Baroness d’Aulnoy received royal permission to return to Paris in 1685, where she promptly set up a literary salon in the rue San-benoit. Intelligent, beautiful, and tinged with an aura of mystery, she soon formed a glittering group around her of nonconformist women and men (and then became embroiled in another scandal when a close friend killed her husband).

There is one English translation collection of some of d'Aulnoy's tales, The Fairy Tales of Madame D'Aulnoy (1892). A few years ago I painstakingly scanned and published it on SurLaLune. The book appears on SurLaLune's Marie-Catherine Baronne d'Aulnoy page. On the same page, I've also included a guide and links where available to other English translations of her tales.

This is also timely since one of the few retellings of d'Aulnoy's The White Cat will appear in May as White Cat by Holly Black. There is also one picture book of the tale, by the way, The White Cat by Robert San Souci and Gennady Spirin. One of the only other retellings I am aware of is by Anne Thackeray Ritchie.


Since I have limited time and space to write as much about d'Aulnoy as I would like--such as her philosophies and motivations--I also HIGHLY recommend Jack Zipes' Beauties, Beasts and Enchantments: Classic French Fairy Tales if you want to read more about d'Aulnoy and the French Salons as well as the tales of other women writers from the salon fairy tale movement.

Fairy Tales, Montessori, and Tim Burton

With Alice in Wonderland released this weekend in the U.S., the media blitz is full force. This bit amused me the most though and is most directly related to this blog.

From Burton Shocked By Posh School's Fairytale Ban:

The principal at the posh Montessori school in London lost out on landing TIM BURTON's son as a student for recommending fairytales aren't healthy for a young mind.

The filmmaker was appalled by the very idea and vowed not to send Billy to the well-respected school.

Burton's wife and muse Helena Bonham Carter says, "Tim has a theory that we impose our own fears on the kids and it's the kids who are quite robust.

"When we were trying to find a nursery school for our son, according to the Montessori method, kids can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy until the age of six.

"The school principal recommended no fairytales, which is why we didn't send Bill to Montessori - because telling Tim Burton that fairytales are not a good idea is a no-no."

And to add to the discussion At Home with Montessori: Fairy Tales - yes or no??:

In my hazy recollection, there is some controversy as to whether or not Montessori was for or against the reading of fairy tales to children.

Those in the "against" court argue that they go against the grain of belief that life should be for real, not wrapped up in talking animals and good and evil.

Those in the "for" court argue that they convey a very real life message in their stories and that legend and folklore are all based on and wrapped up in fairy tales, our history is intrinsically linked.

And more:

Up to today, I was more of the vein that there was no real need for them, they seem cruel and stereotypical and send out the message that life is full of goodies and baddies and that girls are all princesses and boys either bad men or princes. This wasn't the message I wanted to give to the children, so have avoided them to a greater extent.

Today my mind has been entirely changed. Not only do I realise that I was incorrect in my own jaded adult and very literal interpretations of them, but I am doing my children a disservice by omitting them from their lives. Children do not take these stories as literal but much more archetypically which is exactly the way they are meant to be taken.

Read in their original form and appropriately aged (NOT censored!) they emit a very potent message, that life is a journey, that we encounter good and evil in a variety of forms and that when the right paths are chosen on our journies, good will overthrow evil and justice will prevail. Yes, the "baddies" meet their ends, gruesome or not, but in the case of most of these, the end comes around by self infliction. Take for example the wolf in the original version of Little Red Cap - She fills his belly with stones, but she doesn't kill him, the stones are too heavy so when he gets up, he falls down dead. The stones........getting whhhhaaaay deep now, actually represent the materialism in life that tempts us (or Little Red Cap in this instance) when we are on our journies through life. In LRC's case, the wolf opened her mind to be tempted by the flowers (greed) and he, himself, was overcome with greed to not just eat the grandmother but to also eat LRC. At the end, the wolf is destroyed by his very own materialistic greed - the stones, the densest natural material on the earth.

And I thought this was one of the better explanations of the controversy and philosophy, from Montessori Newsletter 11 at Montessori Mom:

Many people believe that Dr. Montessori was against fairy tales and fantasy play for young children. In reality, she didn't have an opinion either way when she started her developmental approach to education. However, she observed that young children became bored with fairy tales during story time in her Children's House.

Montessori teachers were not forbidden to tell stories of any kind. Montessori did notice that the children would drift away to other activities during story time. Parents would tell her that their children loved stories at home and begged the parents to read to them. Dr. Montessori felt that a child's demand for stories was possibly caused from boredom or a need to attract attention from the parent.
(Obviously, my children were always bored or neglected at home with me!)

Montessori, however, did not believe that telling stories was a waste of time. She felt that after children had enough activity during the day, there were times of relaxation that a "good" story could introduce new ideas, animals, locations, and illustrations that would enrich a child's vocabulary and listening skills. She thought one of the most valuable things a parent could do was read a bedtime story that included beautiful pictures.

Montessori's concern about story telling is that a young child would believe any fantasy story read to him or her as the truth. Montessori training emphasized that violent and far fetched fairy tales could cause needless fear and anxieties. She felt that books should have great pictures, ideas, and fun lyrics, but they should not cause nightmares.

And more:

You can read happy fairy tales and fiction to your young children; watch fun fictional movies and television, just tell your child the story is pretend. This is a great time to talk about what is "real and what isn't real." I especially like to talk to children about super heroes and their pretend powers.

It's fine to tell your child that superman really can't fly, but the movie makes it look real.

Ms. Child reflected Montessori's belief about fantasy at this age as follows:

"There is no need to be afraid of the children's fantasies, they represent a stage in development, it is a necessary stage and it is usually outgrown without difficulty. We want to point out that teachers and parents should be prepared to help and not hinder. If we tell them what is not true, even if it is a pretty fancy, it is a lie and may do harm."

There is more at all these links, but the last has good links to further information and discussion, too.

I will say that I find Montessori philosophies very interesting and helpful in many ways in education, so this is no way a bashing. The entire subject is often oversimplified into outright banning which is why I wanted to share some of these quotes and stories to show it isn't.

American McGee and Little Red Riding Hood

This story is appearing on many gaming sites this morning.

American McGee Shows Off Little Red Riding Hood Concept

American McGee posted this concept image, painted by two artists from the veteran developer's Spicy Horse studio in Shanghai, on his Flickr account to share a game idea he's hoping to sell: Little Red Riding Hood with an axe thirsting for wolf blood.

"[The artwork] depicts a scene from a game concept I'll be pitching at this year's GDC," explains McGee. "If we're lucky, an interested publisher will help us move it into production. It's an idea that [Spicy Horse art director] Ken Wong and I have been toying with for years."

This isn't the first time the Alice developer has thought of featuring Red in a video game; his 2008 episodic PC game, American McGee's Grimm, featured a chapter devoted to the fairy tale character. She's also appeared in several other video games in recent years, such as The Path, Fairytale Fights, and Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ.

The original Grimm game was also made into a comic book, by the way, American McGee's Grimm. The game itself is available on GameTap with several packs. Here's a link to The Girl Without Hands, for example.

With the new movie in development, this game might have a better chance of being produced, too. Timing is often the most important factor...

Women in Folklore Month: Leonore Blanche Alleyne Lang

Most of us have heard the saying: "Anonymous was usually a woman." I'm not here to argue the veracity of that statement--although the field of folklore, especially fairy tales, supports it rather well. Today I want to highlight a woman who is almost completely anonymous despite having contributed to one of the most influential collections of fairy tales in the past two centuries.


She is Leonore Blanche Alleyne Lang and her last name gives the greatest clue to her identity. Better known as Mrs Lang or Andrew Lang's wife, she is virtually unknown and unrecognized for her work, although if you look deeply enough you can find some acknowledgement of her.


Most fairy tale afficiandos are familiar with the colored fairy books. I myself often think of them as Andrew Lang's Fairy Books. Twelve in total were published from 1889 to 1910. While not as easily recognized by today's generations, these books are still in print, thanks to Dover Publications. (All twelve are pictured here in their Dover imprints and clickable to Amazon.) Previous generations were raised on these books and the collection still appears in most reasonably sized library collections. Essentially, this collection inspired many of the fairy tale anthologies that have followed. Few collections had appeared in English previously, especially ones gathered from multiple sources.


Fascinating to me, they were multicultural collections before the term was a buzzword in education many decades later. A hundred years after their first printing, they are still amazing collections of fairy tales, some of the first digitized and shared on the web as ebooks. I've used them repeatedly throughout the building of SurLaLune.


The tales were also gathered and translated in good part from foreign language sources. Many of the tales appeared for the first time--and even the only time--in English. They were also edited with children in mind, a practice maligned by some scholars, but a choice that arguably insured their popularity and endurance. After all, the Grimms made similar choices in their editing with child readers in mind.


The cover and title pages of each book credit Andrew Lang as the editor. That's true enough. Lang was a prolific and well-recognized folklorist and author. His career was laudable. His body of published works is formidable. He was a busy man, well-versed and influential in his fields of interest. But his contribution to the colored fairy tale books is minimal.


In Children's Books and Their Creators, edited by Anita Silvey, the entry on Andrew Lang states: "The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession—literary criticism; fiction; poems; books and articles on anthropology, mythology, history, and travel original stories for chldren...he is best recognized for the works he did not write."


In The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, we read: "Though Lang himself had chosen the stories, nearly all the translation and rewriting had been done by others. This was to be the case thoughout the series, Mrs Lang latterly undertaking most of the work."


In other words, Mrs Lang was a partner in her husband's career. This was not a great secret and he didn't seek to take credit away from her. In the preface to The Lilac Fairy Book, he writes:

The fairy books have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other languages.

My part has been that of Adam, according to Mark Twain, in the Garden of Eden. Eve worked, Adam superintended. I also superintend. I find out where the stories are, and advise, and, in short, superintend. I do not write the stories out of my own head. The reputation of having written all the fairy books (an European reputation in nurseries and the United States of America) is 'the burden of an honour unto which I was not born.' It weighs upon and is killing me, as the general fash of being the wife of the Lord of Burleigh, Burleigh House by Stamford Town, was too much for the village maiden espoused by that peer.

Finally, this entry was not intended to diminish Andrew Lang's work or achievements. He made a sizable contribution to the field. His name and reputation made it possible for these books to be published in the first place, for as obvious as they are now, they were rather innovative at the time and a risk for the publisher. We do not know the inner workings of his marriage and why his wife was not given as much credit in print for her work on these volumes. Their marriage was a product of a different time and place, albeit one in which women were more easily accepted as writers in their own rights than they had been previously. Perhaps Leonore preferred to work in relative anonymity, the quiet partner behind the scenes. Perhaps the publisher demanded as such for the first volume and kept the packaging the same in later volumes to avoid tampering with a bestselling series. There simply isn't enough known about the situation to provide answers.


Nevertheless, it is established and accepted that overall Mrs Lang's contribution of work was greater in these volumes than that of her famous husband. And yet most people are completely unaware of her work, thanks to the vagaries of publishing in which her husband's name appears alone on the title pages.


In the end, Leonore Blanche Alleyne Lang was a talented translator, author and editor, making these many tales readable and even beloved by generations of readers. If you've ever tried translating a story from one language to another, you can appreciate her gifts even more. Her work has had a lasting impact and today I wanted to recognize her contribution. Arguably, her husband's career would not be as well-known today without her work as partner and helpmeet.

And, if you explore the prefaces to the books, you'll discover that many of the translators she worked with were also women. So while men's names--Lang's as well as those of his illustrators--appear on the cover and have received the glory for these books, most of the translating and writing was done by women.

PS: Mrs Lang did have a few books with her name on the cover, by the way, including The Red Book of Heroes (1909) and The Book of Saints and Heroes (1912) .

Liberty of London for Target Ad

Has anyone seen the Liberty of London Collection for Target commercial? No, it's not really directly fairy tale related, but it does hearken unto Princess and the Pea meets Thumbelina, does it not?


And I liked it because it was bright and colorful and so very much not wintery. I am weary of winter.

And here's the entire ad:



And now I am so in the mood for chintz for some reason...

Women in Folklore Month: Maria Tatar

Maria Tatar is one of the leaders in fairy tale studies today. Since she is very much active and working in the field, I will focus on her publications today and only quote this information from her Harvard University webpage.

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University, where she teaches courses in German Studies, Folklore, and Children’s Literature.

Like many of her contemporaries, Tatar comes to the field of fairy tale studies on the slant, not through folklore, but through an expertise in a foreign language. She adapted many of her interests to create a successful and laudable career. Many young students interested in fairy tales think they must approach the field only through one line of study, that of folklore, but many avenues are available according to experience and interests.


To the layperson, Tatar is perhaps best known for her annotated fairy tale series of three books: The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (2002), The Annotated Brothers Grimm (2004), and The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen (2007). Of all her publications, these are the best for the casual reader, filled with illustrations and annotations of fairy tales and other supplemental materials.


Tatar has a new collection of Grimms coming out later this year, The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm.


From the publisher:

Forty of the most famous and celebrated stories from the Brothers Grimm translated and edited by a leading professor of folklore. Even after two hundred years, the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm remain among our most powerful stories. Their scenes of unsparing savagery and jaw-dropping beauty remind us that fairy tales, in all their simplicity, have the power to change us. With some of the most famous stories in world literature, including “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Snow White,” as well as some less well known stories like “The Seven Ravens,” this definitive collection promises to entrance readers with the strange and wonderful world of the Brothers Grimm.

Maria Tatar’s engaging preface provides readers with the historical and cultural context to understand what these stories meant and their contemporary resonance. Fans of all ages will be drawn to this elegant and accessible collection of stories that have cast their magical spell over children and adults alike for generations.

Last year, Tatar focused more on the children's literature side of her experience wtih her book, Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood, a book about the importance and power of childhood reading.


But Tatar also has many books about fairy tale studies alone, including a few that appear on many course lists, such as The Classic Fairy Tales, one of the books I cut my own fairy tale studies teeth upon.


And just to round out the list, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales and Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood and Secrets Beyond the Door: The Story of Bluebeard and His Wives.


For more detailed descriptions of these books, you can also visit the Maria Tatar page on SurLaLune.


Tatar also has a blog forum open to the public at Breezes from Wonderland: A Forum for Folklore, Children's Literature, and Storytelling.

Women in Folklore for Women's History Month

It’s March!

March is Women’s History Month.

In honor of the month, I am challenging myself to produce a daily post about women who are somehow related to fairy tales and folklore, be they folklorists, authors, illustrators or scholars in other fields. I have a list of names ready and all are real women, in other words, no fictional characters. I have more names than there are days in the month actually. Some will be living, some not.

Each entry will use a simple heading of Women in Folklore for brevity’s sake. I will also create a Women and Folklore topic label for easier searching later.

When I highlight living women this month, I will keep the biographical and personal information to a minimum, preferrably quoting directly from their own webpages thus sharing information they've pre-approved for public consumption.

And, in case the topic interests you in other ways, SurLaLune has a page devoted to topics concerning women and folklore at Women and Fairy Tales.

Women in Folklore Month: Katharine M. Briggs

I recently finished an article on Katharine M. Briggs (1898-1980) for the next issue of Faerie Magazine. I was familiar with Briggs’ body of work, but not so much with her personal life. The most stunning part of all was realizing that while she had earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Oxford in her twenties, she spent much of the first half of her life away from academia. It wasn’t until after WWII that she completed her doctorate in folklore in 1952 at the age of 53.

Not to say that she didn’t spend much of her life loving and immersing herself in folklore. She spent many of those years writing and producing plays with her sisters, using folklore as inspiration. It was a lifelong interest.

Her first book, The Personnel of Fairyland: A Short Account of the Fairy People of Great Britain for Those who Tell Stories to Children was published in 1953. After that, there was essentially no stopping her. She continued to research and write as well as serve as a key member in the British Folklore Society, using her resources and time to keep the society alive when it was faltering.


Her other books include The Anatomy of Puck: An Examination of Fairy Beliefs Among Shakespeare's Contemporaries and Successors (1959), Pale Hecate’s Team: An Examination of the Beliefs on Witchcraft and Magic Among Shakespeare's Contemporaries and His Immediate Successors (1962), as well as The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (1967).



These were followed by four volume opus, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language (1970-1) followed in 1976 by A Dictionary of Fairies (also known as An Encyclopedia of Fairies in the U.S.), one of the most comprehensive and reliable reference books on faerie lore to this day.


She was also a cat lover and so wrote Nine Lives: The Folklore of Cats in 1980, the year she died.


There were also two novels for children, Hobberdy Dick and Kate Crackernuts, a novel based upon her favorite fairy tale of the same name. I haven’t read either although I have several of her other works on my shelves. I am especially interested in Kate Crackernuts and have it on my personal wishlist.

Overall, Katharine Briggs was an amazing woman. Many of her books remain in print thirty years after her death. She is honored in memoriam by The Folklore Society (formerly The British Folklore Society) with the annual The Katharine Briggs Folklore Award. Her body of work and influence is stellar.


If you want to read more about her life, you can look for a copy of Katharine Briggs: Story-teller (1986) by H. R. Ellis Davidson. You can also look for issue 20 of Faerie Magazine which should be on newsstands by the end of this month to read my full article.