The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm from Taschen

The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm is released today. If you aren't familiar with its publisher, Taschen, they are a publisher of art books, sometimes even risque, often avant garde. So it's fascinating that they's gotten on the fairy tale bandwagon and published a collection of Grimms' tales with illustrations by several illustrators over the past 100+ years. I bought a copy for myself and it's quite lovely. The purple cover is cloth. I have many of the illustrations in other books in my library--I have an extensive SurLaLune library--but some weren't represented before. My biggest disappointment is that several of the illustrations are cropped and bled on the pages. It's lovely, but I want the full images in an "art" book. I'm picky that way. But the book is beautiful and would also make a lovely gift book.

The rest of the information in this post come's from Taschen's webpage for the book. The book is available at all booksellers, including Amazon at The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, of course.

Mirror, mirror on the wall...
A compilation of Brothers Grimm fairy tales complete with vintage illustrations

This book brings together twenty-seven of the most beloved of the famous Grimms’ fairy tales, including all the classics, such as Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel in an all-new translation specially commissioned for this publication. Containing a painstakingly-researched selection of illustrations by some of the most famous illustrators from the 1820s to the 1950s—including golden age legend Kay Nielsen, bestselling author Gustaf Tenggren, British darlings Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham, and giants of nineteenth century German illustration Gustav Süs, Heinrich Leutemann, and Viktor Paul Mohn, as well as many new discoveries—this compilation also includes beautiful silhouettes culled from original publications from the 1870s and 1920s that run throughout the entire layout. Interlaced in the book are also dozens of entirely new silhouettes designed and created especially for this book. In addition to the tales, the book also includes an introduction to the Grimms' legacy, brief introductory texts for each tale, and extended artists' biographies in the appendix. For adults and children alike, this classic addition to any library brings to life the never-ending magic of the Grimms' fairy tales and their delightful illustrations.

* Features illustrations by famous artists from Germany, Britain, Sweden, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the United States in a unique format pairing one tale with one artist
* Includes a new translation accessible to readers of all ages that is based on the final 1857 edition of the tales
* Contains dozens of new, unique silhouettes specially commissioned for the book
* As part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register (which safeguards cultural documents), these tales are widely recognized as a vital part of world history

Following fairy tales are featured in the book:
The Frog Prince, The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats, Little Brother and Little Sister, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Fisherman and His Wife, The Brave Little Tailor, Cinderella, Mother Holle, Little Red Riding Hood, The Bremen Town Musicians, The Devil with Three Golden Hairs, The Shoemaker and the Elves, Tom Thumb’s Travels, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Feathers, The Golden Goose, Jorinde and Joringel, The Goose Girl, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Star Coins, Snow White and Red Nose, The Hare and the Hedgehog, Puss n' Boots, The Golden Key

About the Brothers Grimm:
Brothers Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) were German academics and linguists who spent years collecting popular fairy tales and folk tales. Their resulting compilation of over 200 stories Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children's and household tales) is one of the most famous collections of tales in the world, influencing generations of writers, artists, academics, composers, filmmakers, and animators.

Matthew R. Price has translated for leading theaters and publications in Germany and the US. A graduate of Princeton University, he studied in Berlin on a DAAD Fellowship, receiving his masters from the University of the Arts. After an early career producing theater, he earned an M.B.A. from Columbia University and lives in New York City.

Translator’s Note
"Once upon a time I counted thousands of deutsche marks in a Dresdner Bank vault with a colleague who spoke in heavy Saxon dialect; deciphered medieval German texts in rare-books rooms; and performed Schubert lieder in places as different as Moscow and Montana. These experiences stretched and challenged me, and the German literary, theatrical, and musical culture came to exercise an unexpected grip.
The Grimms occupy an iconic place in that canon, of course. Yet initially I had little sense how best to unpack these stories for today’s Englishspeaking readers—and listeners. I leaned on my training: countless hours of living with the language, and theatrical instincts I’d honed for years. In my mind I saw fantastic animated films as I worked through these stories. They were dark, complex, and arcing versions, not the Disney films associated with the material. There is no denying the unforgiving morality or the harshness of daily life one finds in the tales. But even more striking, finally, was the full range of emotion, especially the comedy and delight of the characters and their antics.

I faced a balancing act between adherence to the original structure, and freedom with the abundant choices of English. I tried to use clear "camera angles" and to dose in narrative color as a sensory highlight. Noel Daniel and I disciplined ourselves to hold fast to the original, despite my urges to tread off the path into the magical woods. I sincerely hope readers will feel that our efforts resulted in a fresh and enjoyable translation reflecting the depth and wonder of these magnificent tales, which offer something for all ages."
--Matthew R. Price, New York City

The editor:TASCHEN editor Noel Daniel graduated from Princeton University, and studied in Berlin on a Fulbright Scholarship. She received a master’s in London and was the director of a photography art gallery before becoming a book editor. Her TASCHEN books include Magic 1400s–1950s (2009) and The Circus 1870–1950 (2008).

Library Essentials Month: From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner

From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner was another book that I acquired during the first stage of creating SurLaLune. (My brain has been attacking this theme chronologically to start, but that will change in a few more days, I'm sure.) The book was a few years old at the time and it was a wondrous discovery in my new found enthusiasm for everything fairy tale. Up to that point, most of my fairy tale studies had been in the psychological bent, thanks to Bettelheim and company during my undergraduate schooling. Finding this book at my local Borders during grad school was a revelation, a good one, never mind that it had nothing to do with my studies. Even the initial HTML project wasn't about fairy tales, it was about programming HTML. I could have used a paper written for another class. I wanted to do a fairy tale instead. I spent more time on the ungraded content than the HTML, obviously. At least I got an A...

This book also qualifies as one of the most often recommended books on SurLaLune, not just by me. Reader comments and users on the SurLaLune Discussion Board often sing its praises. If you are wanting to read about women and fairy tales, this book is a must, an essential. Leaving it out of a bibliography is a mistake.

Book description from the publisher:

In this landmark study of the history and meaning of fairy tales, the celebrated cultural critic Marina Warner looks at storytelling in art and legend-from the prophesying enchantress who lures men to a false paradise, to jolly Mother Goose with her masqueraders in the real world. Why are storytellers so often women, and how does that affect the status of fairy tales? Are they a source of wisdom or a misleading temptation to indulge in romancing?

Some reviews that explain it better:

From Publishers Weekly:

Notwithstanding the prominence of the Grimm Brothers and Charles Perrault, most narrators of fairy tales, asserts Warner, have been women--nannies, grannies, 18th-century literary ladies, sibyls of antiquity. In this richly illustrated, erudite, digressive feminist study, cultural historian Warner (Alone of All Her Sex) argues that instead of seeking psychoanalytic meanings in fairy tales, we must first understand them in their social and emotional context. In her analysis, "Bluebeard" and "Beauty and the Beast" reflect girls' realistic fears of marrige in an era when women married young, had multiple children and often died in childbirth. Her delightfully subversive inquiry profiles reluctant brides, silent daughters, crones, witches, fates, muses, sirens, Saint Anne (image of the old wise woman), the biblical Queen of Sheba and Saint Uncumber, who grew a beard to avoid marriage but was crucified for her rebellion. Angela Carter's fiction, surrealist Leonora Carrington's comic fairy tales, Walt Disney movies and French aristocratic fairy tales of veiled protofeminist protest by Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy provide grist for her mill.

From Library Journal:

In this scholarly, original, and insightful study, Warner (Alone of Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, 1983) explores the relationship between fairy tales and their historical and social contexts. She persuasively demonstrates that the teller of the tale-whether a prophesying enchantress luring knights to their doom or the jolly old beldame, Mother Goose-inevitably reflects the prevailing social prejudices for and against women. Warner first traces the "layered character of the traditional narrator" and the interconnections between storytellers and heterodox forms of knowledge. In the second half of the book, Warner takes up a sampling of tales and demonstrates in them such adult themes as the presense of painful rivalry and hatred between women (Cinderella). Finally, she explores the association of blondeness in the heroine with preciousness and desirability. Highly recommended for all readers who wish a deeper understanding of the fairy tales and cultural icons that have shaped us. Marie L. Lally, Alabama Sch. of Mathematics & Science, Mobile

Reading this will get you thinking about the meaning behind fairy tales, the feminine perspective, historical and gender interpretations of the tales. It is not light reading, but it is highly readable. And it is definitely a library essential. I don't reread it very often now for I have absorbed much of it although I have been contemplating a reread in the near future since it has been several years since I've done more than go straight to the index and look up a direct point or browse through my margin notes. I don't often write margin notes in my books, but this book required it.

I just wish this one was available as an ebook to make its text even more searchable. The index is excellent, but a search function would be even better.

Free eBook: Wickedly Charming by Kristin Grayson

Wickedly Charming (Fates) by Kristin Grayson is free as an ebook for a short time, most likely to promote the new release of Utterly Charming. These are not brand new books, but new ebook releases of older books published by a mainstream publisher once upon a time. Grayson has several books inspired by fairy tales and mythology first released about 10 years go.

Either way, the free won't last long so pick this one up if you are at all interested. Always nice to start thinking about filling up a Kindle Fire, yes?

Description for Wickedly Charming (Fates):

Cinderella's Prince Charming is divorced and at a dead-end in his career, so he opens a bookstore and travels the land ordering books and discovering new authors. Still handsome and still charming, he has given up on women, royalty, and anything that smacks of a future.

Mellie is sick and tired of being called the Evil Stepmother. She did her best by her stepdaughter Snow White, but the girl resented her to no end and made all kinds of false accusations.

Neither of them believes in happily ever after anymore, but both of them believe in happily for the moment...

About the Author

Before turning to romance writing, award-winning author Kristine Grayson edited the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and ran Pulphouse Publishing (which won her a World Fantasy Award). She has won the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award and, under her real name, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the prestigious Hugo award. She lives with her own Prince Charming, writer Dean Wesley Smith, in Portland, Oregon.

Description for Utterly Charming:

Bestselling author Kristine Grayson's fairy tale romances bring the classic stories into the present day, where fairy tale characters must grapple with the complexities of modern life as well as their own destinies.

This time when Sleeping Beauty wakes up, she wants nothing to do with the man who kissed her. Consoling Alex Blackstone, the rejected suitor who is a brilliant magician but inept when it comes to women, falls to modern career woman and lawyer, Nora Barr. Nora now has to deal with Beauty's evil stepmother, and the discovery that Alex just might be her own personal Prince Charming...

Library Essentials Month: A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System by D. L. Ashliman

A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System (Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature) by D. L. Ashliman was another early and important discovery when I was first starting SurLaLune. For full disclosure, I found this in the University of Tennessee library reference section and desperately wanted to take it home. I only "needed" the Bluebeard information at the time, but I was fascinated by all of the other tales living within it. I was vaguely familiar with the Aarne Thompson classfication and had found the motif indexes which were almost incomprehensible to me at the time. I cut my classification teeth on Ashliman's work which also inspired his own excellent Folktexts website which started a few years before SurLaLune but I didn't discover it until after I had launched my site. Search engines weren't nearly as efficient then despite the considerably less volume they sorted through in those days. (Do I sound sufficiently old-fogeyish?)

This book, alas somewhat dated now since the ATU system is now receiving preference in most circles, is still very useful. What it does is gather lists of English language tales under their classification number, a simplified ATU system manual similar to Ashliman's website, but without the full text tales themselves. Of course, all the books included were published before 1987 when the book was published, so the last 20+ years are not included, but this makes an excellent and easy start to hunting down variants of tales available in English. Ashliman's site is limited to out-of-copyright tales as well his own copyrighted translations, but the book covers hundreds of fairy tale anthologies that are still in copyright and can often be found in university libraries. Ashliman's site builds on the most popular tales as does my own SurLaLune site for the 49 tales annotated there, but a significant amount of unique information is available in the book, especially for less popular tale.

If that is rather confusing, here's a basic description from the publisher:

A Guide to Folktales in the English Language is designed to assist both the folklore specialist and the general reader in locating the texts of folktales published in collections. Author D.L.Ashliman follows the widely accepted type classification established by folklorists Annti Aarne and Stith Thompson and last revised in 1961, organizing more than 5,000 stories and episodes under some 1,000 basic plots. Each plot is presented in capsule form, followed by the titles and essential bibliographic data of published variants. The result is a comprehensive overview of all major European folktales that will be invaluable for students of folklore, literature, and popular culture.

Each classification begins with a basic summary of the tale type, too, often based upon its most popular variant. It's great reading if you like this kind of stuff. I do obviously, so this book is a library essential. At times it has lived on my desk and avoided shelving for weeks at a time. When I am actively working on a fairy tale project, it is one of the first books I consult. And when it is shelved, it's only because my desk is being cleared or I need to have it where I know I can find it again easily. It's not inexpensive, but it has earned its cost back over and over again.

Fairy Tale Influenced Fiction in 2012

  

FYI: I have started a new Fairy Tale Influenced Fiction 2012 list on Amazon with several titles already on it if you want a sneak peek of upcoming fairy tale novels. And if you know of any titles not on the list, feel free to email me or post titles here. I will, of course, post more about the books near their release dates, but it's always fun to anticipate...

For now I am most interested in Once Upon a Toad simply because it is a Toads and Diamonds retelling, not a Frog Prince as one might assume from the title.

  

Bargain Ebooks Today: What the Dickens and The Name of the Rose

For those of you considering a Kindle after all the new iterations announced this week--or those who already own one--two books that may be of interest to readers here just dropped in price, probably temporarily, so if you are interested, don't wait. Sometimes these price drops only last a matter of hours or days. (I picked up the Hunger Games Trilogy for under five dollars on Wednesday in a deal that only lasted a few hours.) They've been on my really long watch list and these prices make them a great bargain.

And, while we're here, if you are considering a Kindle--I myself already preordered a Kindle Fire so expect a review when it arrives--please remember to click through SurLaLune before adding one to your cart to purchase. SurLaLune gets a small percentage which helps keep this site going. Believe it or not, this site just manages to support itself--it's not making me rich or even paying a bill or two--this is all done out of passion, not finance, but it helps when it doesn't take away from my pockets either! The Kindle Fire won't be replacing my beloved Keyboard Kindles but will supplement for reading books in color and web browsing and note taking in meetings, or so I hope on the latter. Yes, I have another job entirely separate from SurLaLune that actually pays the bills. I just adore the e-ink screens too much for my extensive bouts of reading so the e-ink Kindles are still my preferred devices for reading regular books.

But on to the bargain books, here's more about them:

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy by Gregory Maguire

Book description:

A terrible storm is raging, and Dinah is huddled by candlelight with her brother, sister, and cousin Gage, who is telling a very unusual tale. It’s thestory of What-the-Dickens, a newly hatched orphan creature who finds he has an attraction to teeth, a crush on a cat named McCavity, and a penchant for getting into trouble. One day he happens upon a feisty girl skibberee working as an Agent of Change — trading coins for teeth — and learns of a dutiful tribe of tooth fairies to which he hopes to belong. As his tale unfolds, however, both What-the-Dickens and Dinah come to see that the world is both richer and far less sure than they ever imagined.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Book description:

The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate.When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey where extraordinary things are happening under the cover of night. A spectacular popular and critical success, The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation but an astonishing chronicle of the Middle Ages.

Library Essentials Month: The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim

Yesterday in my discussion of The Classic Fairy Tales by Peter and Iona Opie, I said it was one of the first books in my fairy tale library beyond actual fairy tale collections and fiction. That book was actually the second. The first nonfiction title was The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Vintage) by Bruno Bettelheim. I acquired it in high school from my mother--she was in college and took a class that used it extensively--and when the class was done, I inherited her book, highlighted text and all. Now my mother has little to no interest in fairy tales beyond that I work with them so that copy holds extra sentimental value as a shared experience. Years later I took the same course--used the same book--and the professor, Margaret Ordoubadian, became my mentor. So, yes, it made an impact.

That said, Bettelheim is very problematic and should be read with a shakerful of salt, at least enough to salt a slug. That's not to say that some of his theories don't ring true, but his methods and such are fraught with issues, such as his choosing of one tale to represent the whole--usually Perrault and Grimms--without real consideration of variants or translations or even the literary influence Perrault, Grimms and the rest put on the tales with their own edits and world views. He's faulty, but I'm not here today to disparage him, so I'll stop that discussion before it steams ahead.

In the end, Bettelheim got a lot of people thinking about fairy tales in new ways. He made an impact, a large one, and his work is still referenced for good and bad several decades later. If you are going to work with fairy tales, you need to be familiar with his work. That makes The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales a library essential. And the book is now available in ebook format, too. It was briefly out of print but a new edition and cover was issued last year, so used or new, it is readily available.

Sunday Morning Pretty: Girl Coaxing Frog

GIRL COAXING FROG

ART NOUVEAU VASE

Continental c.1900

bisque 12" tall

$895.00

No, not strictly a Frog Prince rendering, but it certainly makes one think of the fairy tale so I wanted to share. It's pretty and I like it. I have a fondness for bisque pieces. Found via A Polar Bear's Tale but available for sale at Rick Kaplan Antiques.

Library Essentials Month: The Classic Fairy Tales by Peter and Iona Opie

October is here and I have decided on a new theme for the month. It's so much easier to insure a daily post if I have a theme, so I hope you enjoy these. Each day I will share a book that I consider to be a "library essential." Often these will be some of the most important books in the genre of fairy tale studies. Some will be sentimental favorites. Others will be picked for some other reason as yet to be determined.

To begin, I thought I would start with one of the books that first inspired SurLaLune, The Classic Fairy Tales by Peter and Iona Opie. This was one of the first fairy tale books I acquired beyond my basic fairy tale collections I had owned since childhood, one of the first to open my eyes to the world of fairy tale studies. I was somewhat familiar with the book when I decided to annotate a fairy tale for an HTML programming class and thus acquired it with an eye to gathering more information about Bluebeard, the fairy tale I had chosen.

The rest is SurLaLune early history and The Classic Fairy Tales from the Opies has remained a mainstay in my library ever since. I admit most of the information contained within is very familiar to me, ingrained knowledge even, but I first picked up much within these pages and still keep two copies of the book--one hardcover, one soft--on my shelves even if I don't consult it as often as I did in the beginning. I still refer to it though and always enjoy the time I spend engrossed in its pages.

Here is the book description:

This volume contains twenty-four of the best known fairy tales in the English language, presented here in the exact words of their first English publication or of the earliest surviving text. Including "Sleeping Beauty," "Bluebeard," "Cinderella," "Thumbelina," and "Hansel and Gretel," as well as many others, this collection provides a historical introduction for each tale and a general Introduction which traces the history of fairy tales collected in Asia and Europe long before they appeared in English.

But the book is much more (and a little less) than that. First of all, it collects many illustrations of various tales, too, enchancing the varied history of the tales. Also the volume as well as each tale are given a solid introduction, providing historical background and some analysis of the tales. However, when the volume states that these are the first English versions of the tales, that is mostly true. It offers the first English translations of the most well-known versions of the popular tales, such as Perrault's Cinderella and the Grimms' Hansel and Gretel. In other words, this doesn't mean that the earliest versions of the tales are present in the book, such as the early Italian variants, for less popular variants usually existed previously to Perrault and Grimms. That said, the translations are intriguing and the Opies will often explain the liberties taken with the translations and compare the tales to other variants, too. What they offer is educational and unique in its context.

Overall, the book is a great introduction and thus start to creating a fairy tale apologist. It worked for me. Of course, several other books have helped to make me and SurLaLune what we are today. Those will be discussed thoughout October.