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The Fairy Tellers
Fairy-tales are not just fairy-tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy-Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret history of fairy-tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them.
While there are certain names inextricably entwined with the concept of a fairy-tale, such as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the most significant tellers are long buried under the more celebrated figures who have taken the credit for their stories - people like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab and the Wild Sisters of Cassel. Without them we would never have heard of Aladdin, his Magic Lamp or the adventures of Hansel and Gretel.
Tracking these stories to their sources carries us through the steaming cities of Southern Italy and across the Mediterranean to the dust-clogged alleys of the Maghreb, under the fretting leaves of the Black Forest, deep into the tundra of Siberia and across the snowy hills of Lapland.
From North Africa and Siberia, this book illuminates the complicated relationship between Western civilization and the 'Eastern' cultures it borrowed from, and the strange lives of our long lost fairy-tellers.
While there are certain names inextricably entwined with the concept of a fairy-tale, such as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the most significant tellers are long buried under the more celebrated figures who have taken the credit for their stories - people like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab and the Wild Sisters of Cassel. Without them we would never have heard of Aladdin, his Magic Lamp or the adventures of Hansel and Gretel.
Tracking these stories to their sources carries us through the steaming cities of Southern Italy and across the Mediterranean to the dust-clogged alleys of the Maghreb, under the fretting leaves of the Black Forest, deep into the tundra of Siberia and across the snowy hills of Lapland.
From North Africa and Siberia, this book illuminates the complicated relationship between Western civilization and the 'Eastern' cultures it borrowed from, and the strange lives of our long lost fairy-tellers.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 20, 2022
About the author
Nicholas Jubber
7 books38 followersI'm a writer and traveller, with a passion for history and a pair of itchy feet. I'm fascinated by storytelling, nomadism, exploration and the connections (or misconnections!) between past and present.
I've written four books so far. My latest is Epic Continent, about some of Europe's iconic tales and my adventures amongst them.
Before that was The Timbuktu School for Nomads, about my experiences amongst nomads in North Africa.
The Prester Quest, my first book, sets out from the canals of Venice to the highlands of Ethiopia, following the mission of a medieval physician sent in search of a mythical priest-king. It won the Dolman Travel Book Award.
My second book, Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard, explores the Persian-speaking world through the lens of an 11th century epic poem, travelling from Tehran to the tomb of a medieval Sultan in Afghanistan.
I have written for The Guardian, The Observer, the TLS, the Globe and Mail and BBC Online, amongst other publications; spoken on BBC Radio 4 and NPR in the US; and have written plays performed at the Edinburgh Festival, the Finborough Theatre and the Actors' Centre.
I've written four books so far. My latest is Epic Continent, about some of Europe's iconic tales and my adventures amongst them.
Before that was The Timbuktu School for Nomads, about my experiences amongst nomads in North Africa.
The Prester Quest, my first book, sets out from the canals of Venice to the highlands of Ethiopia, following the mission of a medieval physician sent in search of a mythical priest-king. It won the Dolman Travel Book Award.
My second book, Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard, explores the Persian-speaking world through the lens of an 11th century epic poem, travelling from Tehran to the tomb of a medieval Sultan in Afghanistan.
I have written for The Guardian, The Observer, the TLS, the Globe and Mail and BBC Online, amongst other publications; spoken on BBC Radio 4 and NPR in the US; and have written plays performed at the Edinburgh Festival, the Finborough Theatre and the Actors' Centre.
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December 14, 2022
There are many books analysing fairy tales, but not many about the people who tell them. Not simply those that collect and classify them like the Grimms or Perrault, but the tellers of original tales, who as the title signals, are the subject of this book.
The "fairy tellers" that travel writer Nicholas Jubber chose to showcase are, with the exception of Hans Christian Andersen, either little known save by fairy tale enthusiasts or completely unknown. Which can be surprising given how immensely popular the tales they told are. Everyone knows "Beauty and the Beast," and if asked they'll probably refer to Disney as the creators, an equivocal impression the company itself promotes by omitting the name of the original teller from the credits, but how many can tell the real creator's name? Probably fans of the tale, and even amongst them, not everyone guesses it right because the "reteller" that abridged it is more famous than the actual first teller: Madame de Villeneuve.
To remedy this omission as well as shed light on the circumstances and cultural as well as historical context that led to the creation of famous fairy tales whose authors are generally left in the shadows, Jubber chose six examples, some more interesting than others, some of which had themselves a fairy tale-like life and others not so much; some of the tellers' lives are tragic, and others are rather ordinary, but none of them suffered from a dulled imagination. The first teller is Giambattista Basile, a Neapolitan soldier-for-hire that could've walked out of a Dumas novel and that wrote "The Tale of Tales," one of the very first collections of literary fairy tales (as opposed to folktales) to exist and that contains predecessors to tales that Perrault and the Grimms would make famous, such as Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. Basile left his life as an adventurer and set down to writing, but although he wasn't successful in his lifetime, his tales are still popular and still published, although most readers likely don't know they are his.
The second teller is a name that will be completely unknown to readers: Hanna Dyab, a Syrian Christian of the Maronite persuasion, who is behind Aladdin and Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves. This was probably the most surprising biography for me, because I had always assumed the tales he authored were from "The Thousand and One Nights." Being rather trusting, poor Dyab was manipulated by self-serving French scholars that lured him to Louis XIV's court with promises of fame and social position, where he ultimately ended up like an exotic pet for the court nobles. His is one of the most infuriating stories here, for how he was taken advantage of and robbed of his due as creator of now famous tales, but his life itself was fortunately not tragic despite these setbacks.
The third teller is Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the inventor of "Beauty and the Beast." What, did you think it was Beaumont? No, not at all. Beaumont merely abridged it and made it popular when it got translated into English just in time for the fairy tale craze that took place at the time. In the process, Beaumont also altered the tale, sanitised it for young girls, and slapped a moralistic veneer into it that is the reason so many nowadays think, mistakenly I should add, that the tale is about accepting arranged marriages and that there's Stockholm Syndrome undertones. The original author, however, never intended it as such, and once you learn about her own life, her miserable marriage, and her enterprising career as a writer at a time women's writing was still sneered at and attacked in spite of the valiant efforts of the salonnières. She was successful during her life, too, perhaps not as wildly so as her male contemporaries, but successful enough that her fairy tale was both criticised and beloved by contemporary readers. It sure struck a chord, and keeps doing so.
Fourth comes Dortchen Wild, known in history only as the wife of Wilhelm, the younger Grimm. But she was more than just a loving wife and caring sister-in-law to the Grimms: she was also one of their sources, arguably the most important one as it's speculated up to twenty of their tales came from her. Dortchen's is one of those ordinary village lives, somewhat spiced up with the Napoleonic Wars, and very little is known about her personally, which has led to much speculation that Jubber picks up rather uncritically at times. Anyway, if you're a fan of Hänsel & Gretel, you have Frau Grimm to thank for it, as this tale is one that has the strongest support for her as the author, although some of the reasons why made me smile: the house made of sweets and cake. So very German!
The fifth teller reads like a Dostoevsky stereotype so much that I had to check other sources to make sure Ivan Khudiakov wasn't a character from old Fyodor Mikhailovich's classics. No, Khudiakov was 100% real, poor chap, but you can't be blamed for thinking otherwise. His is the most tragic, but also amusing at times, of all the lives of fairy storytellers accounted for here, and for me personally the most interesting alongside Villeneuve's. Everyone has heard from Baba Yaga these days thanks to the Alexander Afanasyev anthology of Russian tales and other Russophile folklorists that brought them to the West, but the man responsible for many of the popular Baba Yaga tales has been tossed into the dustbin of history, a totally undeserved fate. I think that, of all the tellers, Khudiakov is the one that deserves to be rescued the most from oblivion by having his tales reprinted under his own name. His own life could make for a good novel, too.
The penultimate teller is a Brahmin named Somadeva, from Kashmir, who beat the rest of the tellers here in number of tales to his name, all of which he published in a collection entitled "The Ocean of Story." He is another with an interesting life, him having to become a sort of male Scheherezade for his neurotic queen, sans the threat of beheading by the end of the night, thank goodness. Unfortunately, very little to nothing is known about him, so again this section crams in mostly cultural context plus a sprinkling of speculation.
The last teller doesn't even need an introduction: Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, the world's most famous fairy teller. Of them all, he's the most psychologically open and easier to grasp thanks to the diaries and letters he left. But also the most curiously elusive, as it's very easy to project all sorts of pop psychodiagnoses onto him, from being asexual to being gay to autistic. His tales are also quite easy to misinterpret, by adults most of all because children do get them easily. As they should, because Andersen was a pioneer of telling tales to children, speaking to them directly, which other tellers before and after couldn't achieve.
Some will probably object to the selection of these seven storytellers and come up with names to include instead, but not me. I think it's a fine selection that meets its goals. This isn't about who had the most interesting life, because there are other tellers that had soap opera lives (d'Aulnoy and de La Force come to mind) and yet other tellers have such dull lives they'd send you to sleep. This is about contributions of original fairy tales that made an impact and are still told and retold today, and as such this is a great resource for fairy tale lovers. Of course, it does have some burps, like that Napoleon was diminutive (he wasn't) or that Marina Warner dismissed Villeneuve (she didn't, what she said isn't what the author interprets it as), and taking a novelist's discredited speculation at face value. I'm speaking here of Kate Forsyth's novel on Dortchen Wild, which is pure fiction coming from someone who is neither a folklorist nor a fairy tale academic, and calling it "beautiful" without taking its errors into account as well as diminishing the seriousness of Forsyth's premise as merely parental abuse (it was more than that when you read it closely), is a notable mistake.
I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The "fairy tellers" that travel writer Nicholas Jubber chose to showcase are, with the exception of Hans Christian Andersen, either little known save by fairy tale enthusiasts or completely unknown. Which can be surprising given how immensely popular the tales they told are. Everyone knows "Beauty and the Beast," and if asked they'll probably refer to Disney as the creators, an equivocal impression the company itself promotes by omitting the name of the original teller from the credits, but how many can tell the real creator's name? Probably fans of the tale, and even amongst them, not everyone guesses it right because the "reteller" that abridged it is more famous than the actual first teller: Madame de Villeneuve.
To remedy this omission as well as shed light on the circumstances and cultural as well as historical context that led to the creation of famous fairy tales whose authors are generally left in the shadows, Jubber chose six examples, some more interesting than others, some of which had themselves a fairy tale-like life and others not so much; some of the tellers' lives are tragic, and others are rather ordinary, but none of them suffered from a dulled imagination. The first teller is Giambattista Basile, a Neapolitan soldier-for-hire that could've walked out of a Dumas novel and that wrote "The Tale of Tales," one of the very first collections of literary fairy tales (as opposed to folktales) to exist and that contains predecessors to tales that Perrault and the Grimms would make famous, such as Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. Basile left his life as an adventurer and set down to writing, but although he wasn't successful in his lifetime, his tales are still popular and still published, although most readers likely don't know they are his.
The second teller is a name that will be completely unknown to readers: Hanna Dyab, a Syrian Christian of the Maronite persuasion, who is behind Aladdin and Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves. This was probably the most surprising biography for me, because I had always assumed the tales he authored were from "The Thousand and One Nights." Being rather trusting, poor Dyab was manipulated by self-serving French scholars that lured him to Louis XIV's court with promises of fame and social position, where he ultimately ended up like an exotic pet for the court nobles. His is one of the most infuriating stories here, for how he was taken advantage of and robbed of his due as creator of now famous tales, but his life itself was fortunately not tragic despite these setbacks.
The third teller is Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the inventor of "Beauty and the Beast." What, did you think it was Beaumont? No, not at all. Beaumont merely abridged it and made it popular when it got translated into English just in time for the fairy tale craze that took place at the time. In the process, Beaumont also altered the tale, sanitised it for young girls, and slapped a moralistic veneer into it that is the reason so many nowadays think, mistakenly I should add, that the tale is about accepting arranged marriages and that there's Stockholm Syndrome undertones. The original author, however, never intended it as such, and once you learn about her own life, her miserable marriage, and her enterprising career as a writer at a time women's writing was still sneered at and attacked in spite of the valiant efforts of the salonnières. She was successful during her life, too, perhaps not as wildly so as her male contemporaries, but successful enough that her fairy tale was both criticised and beloved by contemporary readers. It sure struck a chord, and keeps doing so.
Fourth comes Dortchen Wild, known in history only as the wife of Wilhelm, the younger Grimm. But she was more than just a loving wife and caring sister-in-law to the Grimms: she was also one of their sources, arguably the most important one as it's speculated up to twenty of their tales came from her. Dortchen's is one of those ordinary village lives, somewhat spiced up with the Napoleonic Wars, and very little is known about her personally, which has led to much speculation that Jubber picks up rather uncritically at times. Anyway, if you're a fan of Hänsel & Gretel, you have Frau Grimm to thank for it, as this tale is one that has the strongest support for her as the author, although some of the reasons why made me smile: the house made of sweets and cake. So very German!
The fifth teller reads like a Dostoevsky stereotype so much that I had to check other sources to make sure Ivan Khudiakov wasn't a character from old Fyodor Mikhailovich's classics. No, Khudiakov was 100% real, poor chap, but you can't be blamed for thinking otherwise. His is the most tragic, but also amusing at times, of all the lives of fairy storytellers accounted for here, and for me personally the most interesting alongside Villeneuve's. Everyone has heard from Baba Yaga these days thanks to the Alexander Afanasyev anthology of Russian tales and other Russophile folklorists that brought them to the West, but the man responsible for many of the popular Baba Yaga tales has been tossed into the dustbin of history, a totally undeserved fate. I think that, of all the tellers, Khudiakov is the one that deserves to be rescued the most from oblivion by having his tales reprinted under his own name. His own life could make for a good novel, too.
The penultimate teller is a Brahmin named Somadeva, from Kashmir, who beat the rest of the tellers here in number of tales to his name, all of which he published in a collection entitled "The Ocean of Story." He is another with an interesting life, him having to become a sort of male Scheherezade for his neurotic queen, sans the threat of beheading by the end of the night, thank goodness. Unfortunately, very little to nothing is known about him, so again this section crams in mostly cultural context plus a sprinkling of speculation.
The last teller doesn't even need an introduction: Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, the world's most famous fairy teller. Of them all, he's the most psychologically open and easier to grasp thanks to the diaries and letters he left. But also the most curiously elusive, as it's very easy to project all sorts of pop psychodiagnoses onto him, from being asexual to being gay to autistic. His tales are also quite easy to misinterpret, by adults most of all because children do get them easily. As they should, because Andersen was a pioneer of telling tales to children, speaking to them directly, which other tellers before and after couldn't achieve.
Some will probably object to the selection of these seven storytellers and come up with names to include instead, but not me. I think it's a fine selection that meets its goals. This isn't about who had the most interesting life, because there are other tellers that had soap opera lives (d'Aulnoy and de La Force come to mind) and yet other tellers have such dull lives they'd send you to sleep. This is about contributions of original fairy tales that made an impact and are still told and retold today, and as such this is a great resource for fairy tale lovers. Of course, it does have some burps, like that Napoleon was diminutive (he wasn't) or that Marina Warner dismissed Villeneuve (she didn't, what she said isn't what the author interprets it as), and taking a novelist's discredited speculation at face value. I'm speaking here of Kate Forsyth's novel on Dortchen Wild, which is pure fiction coming from someone who is neither a folklorist nor a fairy tale academic, and calling it "beautiful" without taking its errors into account as well as diminishing the seriousness of Forsyth's premise as merely parental abuse (it was more than that when you read it closely), is a notable mistake.
I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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October 12, 2022A very interesting look at seven authors of fairy tales, and where the stories come from. Some of them go back, basically, to the roots of human language (I wish we'd had more on this); very many are rooted in an eleventh century Indian collection which crept across the world. We know a smidge about that author; a great deal more about more recent authors (Dortchen Wild, who was married to one of the Grimms, Hans Christian Anderson, a French lady who wrote Beauty and the Beast, a Syrian adventurer who came up with Aladdin and got ruthlessly shanked by his European "mentors"). Very interesting to consider which stories go back forever and which can be traced to a relatively recent author. There's also a look at people who collected tales, including the Russian who more or less founded the academic study of them and ended up in Siberia.
Very interesting read, which reminds us once again that Hans Christian Anderson was absolutely unbearable.
Very interesting read, which reminds us once again that Hans Christian Anderson was absolutely unbearable.
April 11, 2022
For many of us, myself included faerie tales are the first stories we hear told by loving parents and grandparents at bedtime or in my case at lunch in exchange for practicing my ABC's, much to my grammy's horror my penmanship never got much better than it was at five. For me especially faerie tales are things I always come back to you. If you follow my Goodreads a good portion of the books I read are re-tellings of these tales. I hunt them down and read every one of them no matter how awful the reviews are and to be honest I don't believe I have come across one yet that is actually awful. So when an I guess "scholarly" look at the people who brought us these tales popped up as a suggestion on Netgalley, I jumped at the chance to read it. And then I became a little worried. A scholarly look at anything unfortunately has a tendency to be dry. So I sat on it. I loaded it on my Kindle several times only to close it out and grab a different book, afraid that this book would take the heart out of the tales I have loved my whole life. I am happy to announce that Jubber crafted his own magical tale while bringing these storytellers that many of us have probably never even heard of to life.
Jubber looks at seven individual storytellers who either collected tales or invented their own. People that in many cases have been lost to history, being overshadowed by the people we credit for these tales today. Such as the original author of Beauty and the Beast, or Wilheim Grimm's wife who told the brothers the bulk of their stories. His look at Hans Christian Andersen was possibly my favorite though, especially since many of his stories have been blasted over the last several years. When his life story is brought into the mix the tales (especially The Little Mermaid) take on a new and heartbreaking dimension.
What truly makes this amazing though is Jubber's ability to conjure a time and place and the people living in that time and place. I have never seen an image of many of the people in this book and yet I have an image in my head that after a brief google search of the ones I could find matches his descriptions. His descriptions of places like Kashmir in the 10th century Ad (it could have been the 11th doing this from memory) are on par with (and in many cases better than) any fiction or travel writer. His words evoked real emotion and I'm not going to lie I teared up a bit at the epilogue because he had lovingly taken me through time by telling the lives of these amazing people who shaped much of my worldview as a child.
I honestly cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who is a lover of stories.
And thanks to Netgalley and Smith Publicity for the eArc!
Jubber looks at seven individual storytellers who either collected tales or invented their own. People that in many cases have been lost to history, being overshadowed by the people we credit for these tales today. Such as the original author of Beauty and the Beast, or Wilheim Grimm's wife who told the brothers the bulk of their stories. His look at Hans Christian Andersen was possibly my favorite though, especially since many of his stories have been blasted over the last several years. When his life story is brought into the mix the tales (especially The Little Mermaid) take on a new and heartbreaking dimension.
What truly makes this amazing though is Jubber's ability to conjure a time and place and the people living in that time and place. I have never seen an image of many of the people in this book and yet I have an image in my head that after a brief google search of the ones I could find matches his descriptions. His descriptions of places like Kashmir in the 10th century Ad (it could have been the 11th doing this from memory) are on par with (and in many cases better than) any fiction or travel writer. His words evoked real emotion and I'm not going to lie I teared up a bit at the epilogue because he had lovingly taken me through time by telling the lives of these amazing people who shaped much of my worldview as a child.
I honestly cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who is a lover of stories.
And thanks to Netgalley and Smith Publicity for the eArc!
March 22, 2022
All of the storytellers in this book had enormous challenges to face, from poverty to political turmoil, from psychological afflictions to the horrors of war. Some succeeded in overcoming these challenges, but not all of them did. As we’ll discover, ‘happy ever after’ is a cliché often spurned by the tales themselves. Many of our most beloved stories end sadly, and so, unfortunately, did many of our fairy tellers. But all of them lived, and most of them loved; several of them travelled, experiencing many different shades of the world, and a couple of them succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Making the point early in The Fairy Tellers that many of the tales best known to us in the West can trace their roots back to the Bronze Age, travel writer Nicholas Jubber endeavoured to discover why so many of those tales seem to now be “time-locked inside a bubble of medieval Europe”. As Jubber travelled through France and Germany, India and Syria, Russia and Denmark — seeking out the former homes of both famous and lesser known fairy tellers and interviewing local literary experts — he was surprised to learn how many fairy tale themes and details seemed to repeat across time and cultures, and perhaps less surprised to discover that each teller would imprint the old stories with details from their own lives. As it turns out, these fairy tales, in the forms we know them today, have been “time-locked” thanks to those who had access to publication (generally: white European men), but they weren’t always the tellers of the tales, and Jubber does a genuine service to bring the uncredited fairy tellers themselves (generally: women and non-Europeans) out of the shadows. This book contains many shortened versions of fairy tales, the biographies of their tellers and collectors, and vivid geographical writing from Jubber’s travels; and while that’s a lot to pack into one volume, I found it all very interesting — perhaps lacking in insight and analysis, but Jubber has collected so much of interest here that I’m rounding up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
From the global to the local: the most popular fairy tales are astonishingly agile at aping each other’s structures while transplanting themselves to new locales. As we’ll discover with some of the other tellers in this book, there’s an eerie parallel between the trajectories of disease and the pathways of stories: virulently contagious and cunningly adaptable.
From an early Cinderella-type story found in China (I suppose the impossibly tiny shoe does make the most sense in a foot-binding culture) to the long history of women telling stories about princesses being tricked into marrying beasts, Jubber learned that every time he found the “first” version of a fairy tale, he would later discover an earlier version of it in some other culture’s tradition. And because of that, the popular fairy tales that we know (like those attributed to the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault) can only properly be said to have been “collected” by them — except for those written by Hans Christian Andersen, which Jubber considers original creations (and the last true “fairy tales”). I picked out quite a few interesting tidbits about the fairy tellers behind the well known tales, and I’m putting it all here behind spoiler tags because it’s just. so. much.
Obviously, fairy tales have something vital to relate or else our ancestors would not have been spinning the same basic tales for the past five thousand years. Based on his research for this book, Jubber concludes that to be considered “fairy tales” stories must include magic, appeal to children, and have an element of orality (even if printed). Ultimately, what makes fairy tales, and their tellers, so essential to the human experience is the journey they take us on “to the enlightenment at the heart of the forest”:
Some people come back with jewels pouring out of their mouths, some are covered in pitch or charred with fire. Whatever their experience, everybody returns from the forest knowing more about themselves than when they set out. Tales and trails intertwine, and every one of them is a magic mirror. Like the tellers, we can look into this mirror to see the world — in its splendour and madness and brutality — and if we look carefully enough, we see ourselves peering back.
January 14, 2022
Have you ever wondered where some of the most famous fairy tales came from? If the answer is yes then, The Fairy Tellers is the book for you. Most of us were probably read a fairy tale of two as a child and will know stories such as Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Hansel and Gretel but most won’t know the origins of these stories. Written by travel-writer Nicholas Jubber he has scoured some far-reaching places to bring you the stories of how these tales came to be classics and so well-known across the world.
The book covers the origins behind these stories including their authors and we begin with a map that shows you where in the world the seven storytellers he has chosen were from, though there are plenty more mentioned within the pages.
Essentially the book is like miniature biographies of these writers and includes some of their stories too, opening with ‘The Tale of the Laughing Princess’ and Giambattista Basile. The author has done plenty of in-depth research to find the true and original tale behind the ones we know today as many have been retold and altered over the years.
What I loved about The Fairy Tellers is how much work the author has put into finding the true meaning. He has travelled far and wide and spoken to numerous people, done meticulous research to put this book together and that comes across strongly on every page. He certainly has plenty of passion for the subject.
Whilst this is an interesting and intriguing read I can’t say it was particularly easy to read given how much information is shared, including about the author’s life too. I did have to have long breaks in between sections just to try to soak some of the facts in, but then I’m not a massive non-fiction reader, so if you are you may just fly through this book, especially if you are a fairy tale lover. It is, however, fascinating and enlightening.
The book covers the origins behind these stories including their authors and we begin with a map that shows you where in the world the seven storytellers he has chosen were from, though there are plenty more mentioned within the pages.
Essentially the book is like miniature biographies of these writers and includes some of their stories too, opening with ‘The Tale of the Laughing Princess’ and Giambattista Basile. The author has done plenty of in-depth research to find the true and original tale behind the ones we know today as many have been retold and altered over the years.
What I loved about The Fairy Tellers is how much work the author has put into finding the true meaning. He has travelled far and wide and spoken to numerous people, done meticulous research to put this book together and that comes across strongly on every page. He certainly has plenty of passion for the subject.
Whilst this is an interesting and intriguing read I can’t say it was particularly easy to read given how much information is shared, including about the author’s life too. I did have to have long breaks in between sections just to try to soak some of the facts in, but then I’m not a massive non-fiction reader, so if you are you may just fly through this book, especially if you are a fairy tale lover. It is, however, fascinating and enlightening.
January 30, 2022
Okay I’m not going to deduct a whole star just because the author and I disagree on which of the fairy-tellers has the most interesting story. I did have to slog through the first chapter but it was very definitely worth it. This book fired my imagination so much! I have probably talked at least two people to death over it and several more to boredom, I have got strange looks for laughing at it whilst reading in public, and I can truly say that it is a thoroughly fascinating book for anyone with even a passing interest in fairy tales, although it’s definitely more on the academic side.
June 13, 2022
There are the names you know. Brothers Grimm. Andersen. And then so many you don’t. So many that have been lost amid the sands of time. And yet their work – the stories that brought into the world – live on, have done so for centuries, one reiteration after another, one adaptation after the next. They are some of our most beloved stories of all – the fairy tales.
We know the modern versions, mostly Disneyfied, cleaned-up for the public at large. And yet, fairy tales are meant to be dark. Tragic. Sad. They were written as cautionary tales. Morality instructionals. But made entertaining, with witches and magic.
Those are the fairy tales I know and love. And their origins go back centuries ago, when across the globe, the intrepid creators and collectors created (original material) and collected (and adapted existing folklore) to produce books of stories that would beguile the world’s collective imagination.
And so, from Italy to Siberia, from India to Scandinavia, this book will take you on an adventure to track down those unfairly forgotten fairy tellers and honor their talents, for those writers deserve to be known. For their perseverance, for their passion, for their creativity, imagination, for the way they saw the world and the legacy they left behind.
These might not have been the happiest of individuals, who faced great many challenges in their personal and professional lives, but they were never deterred. They intended to tell fairy tales and they did. And the readers of the following centuries have enjoyed them since. Everywhere a written word has reached.
Now that’s legacy.
So yes, a resounding yes, this book is great. Written by a fairy tale lover for fairy tale lovers, the author’s passion for these stories really comes through. The writing is fun and engaging. This book is a travelogue, a biography collection, a literary study all in one. It draws fascinating parallels between different stories from different cultures and times and shows their meaning within the sociocultural context of their day. And more importantly, it shines the spotlight on the people who so very much deserve it, so that their names may live on along with their magical stories. A great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
We know the modern versions, mostly Disneyfied, cleaned-up for the public at large. And yet, fairy tales are meant to be dark. Tragic. Sad. They were written as cautionary tales. Morality instructionals. But made entertaining, with witches and magic.
Those are the fairy tales I know and love. And their origins go back centuries ago, when across the globe, the intrepid creators and collectors created (original material) and collected (and adapted existing folklore) to produce books of stories that would beguile the world’s collective imagination.
And so, from Italy to Siberia, from India to Scandinavia, this book will take you on an adventure to track down those unfairly forgotten fairy tellers and honor their talents, for those writers deserve to be known. For their perseverance, for their passion, for their creativity, imagination, for the way they saw the world and the legacy they left behind.
These might not have been the happiest of individuals, who faced great many challenges in their personal and professional lives, but they were never deterred. They intended to tell fairy tales and they did. And the readers of the following centuries have enjoyed them since. Everywhere a written word has reached.
Now that’s legacy.
So yes, a resounding yes, this book is great. Written by a fairy tale lover for fairy tale lovers, the author’s passion for these stories really comes through. The writing is fun and engaging. This book is a travelogue, a biography collection, a literary study all in one. It draws fascinating parallels between different stories from different cultures and times and shows their meaning within the sociocultural context of their day. And more importantly, it shines the spotlight on the people who so very much deserve it, so that their names may live on along with their magical stories. A great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
May 15, 2022
Thanks to NetGalley & Nicholas Brealey Publishing for an eARC of this book. The following review is my honest reflection on the text provided.
If you've ever wondered about the people behind popular fairy tales, this is definitely the book for you.
"Over the course of my trail, I tried to work out what makes a 'fairy tale'. An eventyr, 'adventure', a Märchen, a 'little tale', hikayah al-khayaliyeh, a 'story of the imagination'."
It's been a while since I read non-fiction, so it took a few chapters for my brain to readjust to facts over fiction. It helped that there are summaries of fairy tales interspersed between chapters, and, to be honest, these were probably my favourite parts.
"The reason these stories still speak to us is because they were set down by people who knew poverty and wealth, love and hate, fear and excitement, just as we do today; people who shared in the humus of human life."
Jubber is unafraid and thankfully unwilling to shy away from the misogyny, racism, and prejudice in many of these original stories. It's interesting to see how these collectors and writers of fairy tales come from a wide range of backgrounds. I went into The Fairy Tellers aware of the obvious - Giambattista Basile, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Anderson, but I was very excited to learn about some female fairy tellers. Namely, Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, for who 'Beauty and the Beast' could almost be considered autobiographical, Baroness d'Aulnoy, who had a circle of ladies competing in fairy telling competitions when she wasn't busy being a spy, and Dortchen Wild who provided the Brothers Grimm with at least a dozen of their collected fairy tales and ended up married to Wilhelm Grimm. Of course, it's never surprising when men in history overshadow women, but it's nice to have the record set straight.
"One of the less palatable lessons of traditional fairy tales is that curiosity (especially in young women) is often answered with punishment rather than reward. But if you've got the itch, you're going to find it awfully hard to stop scratching."
"Giambattista builds his stories around women fighting with all the resources at their disposal. For all their flaws, and for all the platitudes of conventional misogyny sprinkled throughout the book, they are rarely silent or inactive."
It was also nice to move to different, somewhat unexpected parts of the world to learn more about the men behind some famous fairy tales. Hanna Dyab, a Syrian writer, brings us Aladdin and Ali Baba, Ivan Khudiakov is considered a Russian revolutionary who popularised Baba Yaga, and Somadeva, a prolific poet from India whose book was "twice as long as the Odyssey and the Iliad combined - roughly the length of The Lord of the Rings."
"Sure, there are princes and princesses, but only occasionally: Hanna shows that anybody can drive a story. The way is led by rope makers and robbers, slaves and street kids, tea sellers and tree fellers."
It was interesting to see how fairy tales moved in and out of fashion throughout time and to be able to follow their journey and evolution to the stories we know so well today.
"Stories flowed along the routes of caravans and ships, burrowing into their new host societies, adapting to local conditions, reshaped by new storytellers who added their own spin on them and made them their own."
Besides, where else can you read about someone being "murdered by a volcano" ?
Review originally posted here on Britt's Book Blurbs.
If you've ever wondered about the people behind popular fairy tales, this is definitely the book for you.
"Over the course of my trail, I tried to work out what makes a 'fairy tale'. An eventyr, 'adventure', a Märchen, a 'little tale', hikayah al-khayaliyeh, a 'story of the imagination'."
It's been a while since I read non-fiction, so it took a few chapters for my brain to readjust to facts over fiction. It helped that there are summaries of fairy tales interspersed between chapters, and, to be honest, these were probably my favourite parts.
"The reason these stories still speak to us is because they were set down by people who knew poverty and wealth, love and hate, fear and excitement, just as we do today; people who shared in the humus of human life."
Jubber is unafraid and thankfully unwilling to shy away from the misogyny, racism, and prejudice in many of these original stories. It's interesting to see how these collectors and writers of fairy tales come from a wide range of backgrounds. I went into The Fairy Tellers aware of the obvious - Giambattista Basile, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Anderson, but I was very excited to learn about some female fairy tellers. Namely, Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, for who 'Beauty and the Beast' could almost be considered autobiographical, Baroness d'Aulnoy, who had a circle of ladies competing in fairy telling competitions when she wasn't busy being a spy, and Dortchen Wild who provided the Brothers Grimm with at least a dozen of their collected fairy tales and ended up married to Wilhelm Grimm. Of course, it's never surprising when men in history overshadow women, but it's nice to have the record set straight.
"One of the less palatable lessons of traditional fairy tales is that curiosity (especially in young women) is often answered with punishment rather than reward. But if you've got the itch, you're going to find it awfully hard to stop scratching."
"Giambattista builds his stories around women fighting with all the resources at their disposal. For all their flaws, and for all the platitudes of conventional misogyny sprinkled throughout the book, they are rarely silent or inactive."
It was also nice to move to different, somewhat unexpected parts of the world to learn more about the men behind some famous fairy tales. Hanna Dyab, a Syrian writer, brings us Aladdin and Ali Baba, Ivan Khudiakov is considered a Russian revolutionary who popularised Baba Yaga, and Somadeva, a prolific poet from India whose book was "twice as long as the Odyssey and the Iliad combined - roughly the length of The Lord of the Rings."
"Sure, there are princes and princesses, but only occasionally: Hanna shows that anybody can drive a story. The way is led by rope makers and robbers, slaves and street kids, tea sellers and tree fellers."
It was interesting to see how fairy tales moved in and out of fashion throughout time and to be able to follow their journey and evolution to the stories we know so well today.
"Stories flowed along the routes of caravans and ships, burrowing into their new host societies, adapting to local conditions, reshaped by new storytellers who added their own spin on them and made them their own."
Besides, where else can you read about someone being "murdered by a volcano" ?
Review originally posted here on Britt's Book Blurbs.
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January 12, 2022
The Fairy Tellers: A Journey Into The Secret History Of Fairy Tales is an in-depth study of the subject. Most fairy stories that we know today have been passed down through hundreds and thousands of years. They have been retold, re-invented and re-worded, but where did they originate from?
Nicholas Jubber undertook an enormous task, choosing to focus on just seven writers, although many more are mentioned within the pages. Jubber searched through history, followed trails and investigated who the original story tellers were. The book is broken into seven main parts and takes the reader first to 16th century Venice and Giambattista Basile with his stories that led to Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. Next are the stories from Hanna Dyab, who brought his tales, one of which was Aladdin, with him from Syria to Paris in the 1700s.
Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve introduced Beauty and The Beast around 1756, while in Germany the Grimm brothers were collecting stories; Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel and The Elves And The Shoemaker were told to the brothers by a young girl called Dortchen Wild.
Part five heads to Russia and Ivan Khudiakov’s role in the Baba Yaga retellings. In part six, Jubber travels back to the year 1070 in Kashmir where court poet Somadeva wrote Ocean Of The Streams Of Story, an epic tale. Jubber picks out plots from all of these stories and shows us how the themes became repeated in later accounts as they filter down through history.
Part seven is dedicated to the famous Hans Christian Anderson; his stories reflected what he saw around him and were often his way of escaping a lonely life. We remember him for The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen and numerous other tales about animals and children.
Sprinkled throughout the book are short versions of lots of fairy stories, and diagrams which guide the reader along routes that the retellings took and how we have come to know them today. It is a fascinating book and at around 300 pages there is a lot of material to read through. Jubber has presented a very interesting analysis of the history of the fairy tale. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in fairy tales. Just as story tellers all through the ages have done so, authors today continue to rewrite such tales using their own slant. Who knows what new versions of these old favourites future generations will be reading?
Nicholas Jubber undertook an enormous task, choosing to focus on just seven writers, although many more are mentioned within the pages. Jubber searched through history, followed trails and investigated who the original story tellers were. The book is broken into seven main parts and takes the reader first to 16th century Venice and Giambattista Basile with his stories that led to Cinderella, Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. Next are the stories from Hanna Dyab, who brought his tales, one of which was Aladdin, with him from Syria to Paris in the 1700s.
Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve introduced Beauty and The Beast around 1756, while in Germany the Grimm brothers were collecting stories; Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel and The Elves And The Shoemaker were told to the brothers by a young girl called Dortchen Wild.
Part five heads to Russia and Ivan Khudiakov’s role in the Baba Yaga retellings. In part six, Jubber travels back to the year 1070 in Kashmir where court poet Somadeva wrote Ocean Of The Streams Of Story, an epic tale. Jubber picks out plots from all of these stories and shows us how the themes became repeated in later accounts as they filter down through history.
Part seven is dedicated to the famous Hans Christian Anderson; his stories reflected what he saw around him and were often his way of escaping a lonely life. We remember him for The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen and numerous other tales about animals and children.
Sprinkled throughout the book are short versions of lots of fairy stories, and diagrams which guide the reader along routes that the retellings took and how we have come to know them today. It is a fascinating book and at around 300 pages there is a lot of material to read through. Jubber has presented a very interesting analysis of the history of the fairy tale. I recommend this to anyone who is interested in fairy tales. Just as story tellers all through the ages have done so, authors today continue to rewrite such tales using their own slant. Who knows what new versions of these old favourites future generations will be reading?
August 5, 2023
I love learning about the lives of historical figures. This book did not disappoint.
Ever wonder what the roots of your favorite stories are? Cinderella, Aladdin, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots...they all followed unique yet similar trajectories. This book focuses more on the people who passed them on rather than the trajectories in and of themselves.
Some were retellings the the fairytellers included in their collections, with a bit of edits based on the storyteller who spread it. Others were original tales by the storytellers themselves.
Some of the most fascinating parts were about the ways stories traveled through time and place, from one storyteller to the other, often following paths of disease and trade. These tales are obviously universal--but Jubber accurately points out that they are also uniquely local, as the details about them changed from one locale, one time period, one storyteller to the next.
The author tried to be diverse and included an Arab and Indian storyteller, but the rest were European so it was still Eurocentric. Not necessarily a bad thing in this case, as the goal was just to explore some of the lives of the fairy tellers, and it made no attempt to describe the collection as comprehensive. But it's just something to take note of.
It's not an academic history book, it's a popular one aimed at general adult readers, so it's not a study attempting to make serious arguments or answer analytical questions. The prose was smooth and read more like a narrative. That's honestly probably the cause behind my biggest critique of the book: the author often sounded so whimsical to the point that I felt that he may have exaggerated or romanticized some of the fairy tellers' lives, coming to conclusions that I wasn't entirely convinced by. He tried so hard to find parallels/connections between the storytellers and their fairytales, and often the evidence he gave for such connections didn't convince me, no matter how poetic they appeared on the surface.
But besides that, it was an interesting, informative read, and Jubber did a good job contextualizing the storytellers in their settings (I often felt like I was roaming the streets of Italy or touring the Grimm's German village) and showing their unique quirks, personalities, tragedies, and successes.
Ever wonder what the roots of your favorite stories are? Cinderella, Aladdin, Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots...they all followed unique yet similar trajectories. This book focuses more on the people who passed them on rather than the trajectories in and of themselves.
Some were retellings the the fairytellers included in their collections, with a bit of edits based on the storyteller who spread it. Others were original tales by the storytellers themselves.
Some of the most fascinating parts were about the ways stories traveled through time and place, from one storyteller to the other, often following paths of disease and trade. These tales are obviously universal--but Jubber accurately points out that they are also uniquely local, as the details about them changed from one locale, one time period, one storyteller to the next.
The author tried to be diverse and included an Arab and Indian storyteller, but the rest were European so it was still Eurocentric. Not necessarily a bad thing in this case, as the goal was just to explore some of the lives of the fairy tellers, and it made no attempt to describe the collection as comprehensive. But it's just something to take note of.
It's not an academic history book, it's a popular one aimed at general adult readers, so it's not a study attempting to make serious arguments or answer analytical questions. The prose was smooth and read more like a narrative. That's honestly probably the cause behind my biggest critique of the book: the author often sounded so whimsical to the point that I felt that he may have exaggerated or romanticized some of the fairy tellers' lives, coming to conclusions that I wasn't entirely convinced by. He tried so hard to find parallels/connections between the storytellers and their fairytales, and often the evidence he gave for such connections didn't convince me, no matter how poetic they appeared on the surface.
But besides that, it was an interesting, informative read, and Jubber did a good job contextualizing the storytellers in their settings (I often felt like I was roaming the streets of Italy or touring the Grimm's German village) and showing their unique quirks, personalities, tragedies, and successes.
February 9, 2022
It has been a long time since I have read any fairy tales to my children, or even to myself even. I even remember reading the classic stories way way back in my childhood too. These stories are still heard and seen regularly today, they can be seen in the pantos that follow the Christmas season and the plethora of animated movies (that I must admit I haven’t seen hardly any of)
These modern retellings of the fairy tales are often a more sanitised version of these are sometimes brutal stories. Probably the most famous names associated with these tales are the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, But some of the other famous stories were collected by people whose names are not as well known. I didn’t know the authors of the famous tales Hansell and Gretel and all of the Arabian Nights stories. Tracing the origins of them will take Jubber across the northern climes and then heading through the Black Forest, onto Southern Europe before arriving in the Middle East.
Each of the chapters begins with the story which we are going to learn about. Most of them I knew, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, but there are others in here that I had not come across before, such as The Tale of All Kinds of Fur and The Tale of the Firebird. We are taken through the known history behind them and how they came to be known to a wilder world.
I thought that Jubber has written a fascinating book, his prose is engaging and you can tell that he is obviously still captivated by the stories even today. He even manages to persuade his teenage friends to go to an animated film at the Bournemouth cinema one day rather than watch an action film. He tells captivating stories on how these came to be wider known in global culture and the little know background about the people that found these stories. If you have a thing for fairy tales and have always wondered where they came from this is a good book to start with. It has also made me want to reread the fairy tales of my childhood too.
These modern retellings of the fairy tales are often a more sanitised version of these are sometimes brutal stories. Probably the most famous names associated with these tales are the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, But some of the other famous stories were collected by people whose names are not as well known. I didn’t know the authors of the famous tales Hansell and Gretel and all of the Arabian Nights stories. Tracing the origins of them will take Jubber across the northern climes and then heading through the Black Forest, onto Southern Europe before arriving in the Middle East.
Each of the chapters begins with the story which we are going to learn about. Most of them I knew, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, but there are others in here that I had not come across before, such as The Tale of All Kinds of Fur and The Tale of the Firebird. We are taken through the known history behind them and how they came to be known to a wilder world.
I thought that Jubber has written a fascinating book, his prose is engaging and you can tell that he is obviously still captivated by the stories even today. He even manages to persuade his teenage friends to go to an animated film at the Bournemouth cinema one day rather than watch an action film. He tells captivating stories on how these came to be wider known in global culture and the little know background about the people that found these stories. If you have a thing for fairy tales and have always wondered where they came from this is a good book to start with. It has also made me want to reread the fairy tales of my childhood too.
June 25, 2022
A wonderfully compelling exploration of fairy tales, their origins, the cultures that gave birth to them, the collectors who collected them, their spread around the world and their continuing appeal. Meticulously researched, comprehensive and detailed, wide-ranging in time and place, it all makes for some compelling reading. The inclusion of a few of the most well-known tales adds to what is already a very pleasurable reading experience. The style is accessible – even humorous a times - and never gets bogged down in scholarship, although the scholarship is obviously there. Highly recommended.
March 12, 2023
4.5– I loved the concept of trying to pinpoint the origin of the fairytales as we know them today. While I was definitely impressed with the author’s research, I found some of the historical information a little drawn out in certain parts. The fact that we can see that many of our favourite tales come from the lower class to challenge political structures/ social norms or as an means to gain acceptance as an outsider makes me love these stories even more. Out of all the individuals described, Villeneuve and Andersen were the most interesting to read. Definitely recommend this for all Disney fans especially.
February 14, 2022
"we can look in this mirror to see the world - in its splendour and madness and brutality - and if we look carefully enough, we see ourselves peering back"
February 25, 2022
If I start a professional storytelling school, this will be on the mandatory reading list. It is a book storytellers and fairy tale enthusiasts alike should definitely own. It puts "old stories" in a whole new perspective, illustrating the many ways their collectors and/or authors left their personal mark on texts that romantics like to label "universal." I have been deeply immersed in storytelling for almost two decades now, but this book could introduce me to new literary figures, and even told me a whole lot of fun new details about the lives of some whom I've read whole books about. The entire volume is rich in delicious detail. You can tell the author dug deep into history, literature, primary sources, contemporary authors, modern experts, and even personal travel experience. The result is a book that gets the facts right, but presents them with the lively humor and twinkle-eyed excitement of personal telling. "You'll never guess what I just found out about Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve!" And I am ready to listen, every time. Thanks to the extended bibliography, I now have a much longer TBR, too.
April 22, 2024
I REALLY wanted something less textbooky, but alas, it was a textbook. Such a pretty cover wasted on something not fun to read. I am really disappointed about this, fairytale history could have been FUN.
April 24, 2022
This book is an incredibly thoughtful examination of the history of fairy tales, focusing on the people who wrote them and what compelled them to do so. The book, while somewhat interesting and enjoyable at first, becomes more compelling as it progresses, since each chapter seems to exist in conversation with the others. The book provides information on non-Western stories and female authors, which I expected after reading the introduction; what was a pleasant surprise, however, was how these figures and their contributions continue to reemerge as more famous Western fairy tellers are discussed, reminding us how authors like the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen were indebted to those who came before them.
The writing style is friendly and conversational, which seems like a fitting approach considering the emphasis on oral storytelling and the accessibility of these tales. There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about how dark original fairy tales can be - like how the Little Mermaid dies at the end of Andersen's version, or how the Grimm stories often feature people losing body parts. I feel like this is the first book I have read that has given a comprehensive explanation as to why that was the case, highlighting how children's literature can be a nuanced representation of historical context. I'm kind of sad that this book is over because it was so fun to read?
Thank you NetGalley and Nicholas Brealey Publishing for giving me an early copy in exchange for my review!
The writing style is friendly and conversational, which seems like a fitting approach considering the emphasis on oral storytelling and the accessibility of these tales. There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about how dark original fairy tales can be - like how the Little Mermaid dies at the end of Andersen's version, or how the Grimm stories often feature people losing body parts. I feel like this is the first book I have read that has given a comprehensive explanation as to why that was the case, highlighting how children's literature can be a nuanced representation of historical context. I'm kind of sad that this book is over because it was so fun to read?
Thank you NetGalley and Nicholas Brealey Publishing for giving me an early copy in exchange for my review!
August 13, 2023
For any fan of Fairy tale .. This is a must! A really intresting historical analysis into the history of our best loved fairy tales! It was such a fascinating read! Definitely reccomed to anyone who is interested in fairy tales!!
January 6, 2022
This is a truly wonderful book about the origins and storytellers behind the most magical fairy tales that we all take for granted! It's only when I picked this book up that I realised I knew very little, if anything at all, about how they came to be, and about the people that wrote them! So this book has enlightened me in so many ways, and has just made me want to pick up all the old fairy tales I have to enjoy them once more, and see beyond the 'Disney' magic and get a bit more of an understanding and deeper sense of the story behind the story! so to speak!
This is a book that covers geography as it takes you all over the world, history as it looks at the goings on around the writers at the time they wrote them, and all the folk tales that inspired the storytellers to put pen to paper and create these wonderful stories that we all know and love so much.
As well as the well known writers who receive all the plaudits for the fairy tales - Hans Christian Andersen and The Brothers Grimm - it also does a wonderful job of introducing the many other brilliant storytellers such as Hanna Diyab (Aladdin and Ali Baba), Dortchen Wild and Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (Beauty and the Beast) to name but a few, and gives you a real insight into their stories and what inspired or prompted them to write.
You really get a great sense of the extensive research that this author has put into this piece of work. He travels across the globe to find out more about these authors and their backgrounds and showing how often the messages behind these stories are often a lot darker and deeper than they appear on the surface. And I think that is why they work on so many levels to different readers. To a child the stories appear full of magic and wonder, to an adult we see the hidden depths to each tale and notice a lot more going on. Many of the writers had such fascinating and often tragic life stories themselves so you can see the correlation between fact and fiction.
This was a book that has reignited my passion for fairy tales and I'm eager to start picking them up all over again now that I know more about the past of the writers and what led them to create the characters and situations in each tale. A truly fascinating and absorbing piece of writing!
This is a book that covers geography as it takes you all over the world, history as it looks at the goings on around the writers at the time they wrote them, and all the folk tales that inspired the storytellers to put pen to paper and create these wonderful stories that we all know and love so much.
As well as the well known writers who receive all the plaudits for the fairy tales - Hans Christian Andersen and The Brothers Grimm - it also does a wonderful job of introducing the many other brilliant storytellers such as Hanna Diyab (Aladdin and Ali Baba), Dortchen Wild and Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (Beauty and the Beast) to name but a few, and gives you a real insight into their stories and what inspired or prompted them to write.
You really get a great sense of the extensive research that this author has put into this piece of work. He travels across the globe to find out more about these authors and their backgrounds and showing how often the messages behind these stories are often a lot darker and deeper than they appear on the surface. And I think that is why they work on so many levels to different readers. To a child the stories appear full of magic and wonder, to an adult we see the hidden depths to each tale and notice a lot more going on. Many of the writers had such fascinating and often tragic life stories themselves so you can see the correlation between fact and fiction.
This was a book that has reignited my passion for fairy tales and I'm eager to start picking them up all over again now that I know more about the past of the writers and what led them to create the characters and situations in each tale. A truly fascinating and absorbing piece of writing!
June 11, 2023
So interesting! I really liked the variety of tellers chosen (a few I'd heard of, most I hadn't), and the way Jubber brings each historical and cultural context to life so vividly. The connections between similar stories that show up in different cultures and eras were fascinating, and I love how explict he is about how fairytales have been used as a tool of resistance in so many different contexts.
May 4, 2022
Such a captivating, well-researched read. One of my favourite non-fiction reads of recent years.
November 6, 2022
Absolutely brilliant! Beautifully written and enchanting! It was so good, that I had to write a message to the author and express my admiration. I got a message back and I couldn’t be any happier :)
December 13, 2022
Maybe a 3,5.
This book was a rollercoaster of me liking it or being very bored of it. Some of the chapters were good and very interesting to read. For example I read H.C.Andersen’s chapter in a single, very quick sitting, because it was really good. Somadeva’s chapter, on the other hand, might have made me skip a few paragraphs.
Overall it’s a nice book containing some interesting life stories, but the style in which it is written is not for me.
This book was a rollercoaster of me liking it or being very bored of it. Some of the chapters were good and very interesting to read. For example I read H.C.Andersen’s chapter in a single, very quick sitting, because it was really good. Somadeva’s chapter, on the other hand, might have made me skip a few paragraphs.
Overall it’s a nice book containing some interesting life stories, but the style in which it is written is not for me.
March 28, 2022
The Fairy Tellers was an interesting and enjoyable read. I had heard of most of the writers mentioned, but I didn't know a lot about the background of some of them, so it was fascinating to discover a bit about their lives and how they came to write/collect their stories. The tales of these authors are told in an engaging manner, with summaries of some of their key stories interspersed between the chapters. There is also a useful bibliography if you wish to read on. This is a book sure to appeal to fans of fairytales. It gets a solid 4 stars from me.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
July 26, 2022
This book is fantastic and beautiful.
The sheer details involved in this novel are marvelous and something I would like to share with others. Learning more about the origin and the story of the people behind the stories we all cherish is riveting and enthralling. I truly cannot wait for a copy of this book.
Thank you so much to NetGalley for a copy of this book!
The sheer details involved in this novel are marvelous and something I would like to share with others. Learning more about the origin and the story of the people behind the stories we all cherish is riveting and enthralling. I truly cannot wait for a copy of this book.
Thank you so much to NetGalley for a copy of this book!
September 23, 2022
Fairy tales are beloved all over the world, by children and adults alike. They continue to be turned into blockbuster films, but they also continued to be told in the dark. I have adored fairy tales since I was a child but, being me, I always wanted to know more about them and their origin. And this is how I encountered The Fairy Tellers, a book full of tales that celebrates the act of telling. Thanks to Nicholas Brealey and NetGalley, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Fairy tales were my bread and butter as a child. My mother had a collection of books with fairy tales from all over the world. The German fairy tales, as written down by the Grimm Brothers formed the backbone of my education, but it was enriched by fairy tales from Africa, Asia, and North America. It started a life-long obsession with the stories, which did much to inspire my love for medieval literature. But where do these stories come from? Why are they immediately recognisable and yet so hard to define? Where did fairy tales begin? These are the driving questions behind Nicholas Jubber's journey in The Fairy Tellers as well and I truly couldn't have asked for a better guide.
The Fairy Tellers tells the tale of six of the most influential people in the history of fairy tales, some well-known, others shamefully forgotten or actively hushed away. While not chronological, the journey through The Fairy Tales feels natural. First is Giambattista Basile, known for The Tale of Tales, or Lo Cunto de li Cunti. Nicholas Jubber brings to live the Neapolitan culture in the way Basile did himself in his tales. Basile wrote the first known version of tales which came to echo throughout countless childhoods, from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty, yet also beautiful oddities like The Flea with its spunky princess. Next is the tale of Youhenna (or Hanna) Diab, a man from the souks of Aleppo who, through countless adventures, finds himself in Paris during its obsession with A Thousand and One Nights, telling the tales of Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin to Antione Galland, who promptly took credit. His tales, specifically Aladdin, are so well known, and yet the man himself is a cypher. His autobiography was discovered in the Vatican Library, resurrecting him from history, and Jubber does his tale justice in The Fairy Tellers. The third teller is also from Paris, namely Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, whose fall from nobility to poverty inspired her many heroines, but specifically Belle in Beauty and the Beast. While the "beast-groom" story was already popular amongst the story-tellers of Paris, de Villeneuve wrote the tale which introduced the key elements we still know today, from the rose to the singing wardrobe. And she got exactly no credit for it for a very long time.
Rather than focus on the Brothers Grimm entirely, Jubber dedicates his fourth part to Dortchen Wild, one of the young women who told them tales, most famously Hans and Gretel and Rumpelstilskin. Tracking her influence on the brothers, from the stories she told them to her marriage to Wilhelm, Jubber shines a light on a forgotten woman. From here we move further afield, to Ivan Khudiakov's rollercoaster of a life. Brilliant from childhood, he published his first collection of Russian fairy tales before the age of 22, but that's only where the rollercoaster starts. Khudiakov actually, unlike the Brothers Grimm, traveled through the land collecting and transcribing tales from "the common folk" and for him these tales were a crucial part of a potential revolution. This drive did not end well for him. From revolutionary Russia part 6 hops to medieval India and Somadeva's The Ocean of the Stream of Stories, or Kathasaritsagara. A beautiful collection that combines storytelling with mythology and religion, it is a major work by a mostly mysterious man. Not much is known about Somadeva, but Jubber brilliantly evokes Kashmir for the reader, allowing us to appreciate what an impact storytelling could have had. The Fairy Tellers ends with perhaps the most famous teller, Hans Christian Andersen. While he does not need to be rescued from obscurity, his life does demonstrate the saving grace of story telling like no other. Constantly searching for recognition and love, Andersen's stories create an entire world in which many of us have found a home.
The Fairy Tellers ends with a rousing ode to fairy tales, with a strong emphasis on their beauty but also their grace. While fairy tales are hard to define, they share the trait of having to be told. A written fairy tale is different to one that is told, whether actively by a parent to a child or passively through a framing device. They must somehow forge a connection between two people, through the shared intimacy of a shared story. Nicholas Jubber shares his journey with us, showing us what he saw in Aleppo before it was bombed, how he commisserated with the abused statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, and how Naples impressed him. The reader gets to travel with him and share in the stories he finds. The Fairy Tellers is almost like a fairy tale in that sense itself, full with a sense of magic and timelessness, and yet just odd enough here and there that you can't help but cock your head. His research and skill saves some of the above tellers from obscurity, at least for me, and made them as dear to me as the fairy tales they told themselves. And that is truly what a good story is meant to do, create a connection.
The Fairy Tellers is a beautiful journey into the history of the telling of tales. Told with a genuine personal touch, Jubber's book is a must-read for any fairy tale lover like myself!
URL: https://universeinwords.blogspot.com/...
Fairy tales were my bread and butter as a child. My mother had a collection of books with fairy tales from all over the world. The German fairy tales, as written down by the Grimm Brothers formed the backbone of my education, but it was enriched by fairy tales from Africa, Asia, and North America. It started a life-long obsession with the stories, which did much to inspire my love for medieval literature. But where do these stories come from? Why are they immediately recognisable and yet so hard to define? Where did fairy tales begin? These are the driving questions behind Nicholas Jubber's journey in The Fairy Tellers as well and I truly couldn't have asked for a better guide.
The Fairy Tellers tells the tale of six of the most influential people in the history of fairy tales, some well-known, others shamefully forgotten or actively hushed away. While not chronological, the journey through The Fairy Tales feels natural. First is Giambattista Basile, known for The Tale of Tales, or Lo Cunto de li Cunti. Nicholas Jubber brings to live the Neapolitan culture in the way Basile did himself in his tales. Basile wrote the first known version of tales which came to echo throughout countless childhoods, from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty, yet also beautiful oddities like The Flea with its spunky princess. Next is the tale of Youhenna (or Hanna) Diab, a man from the souks of Aleppo who, through countless adventures, finds himself in Paris during its obsession with A Thousand and One Nights, telling the tales of Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin to Antione Galland, who promptly took credit. His tales, specifically Aladdin, are so well known, and yet the man himself is a cypher. His autobiography was discovered in the Vatican Library, resurrecting him from history, and Jubber does his tale justice in The Fairy Tellers. The third teller is also from Paris, namely Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, whose fall from nobility to poverty inspired her many heroines, but specifically Belle in Beauty and the Beast. While the "beast-groom" story was already popular amongst the story-tellers of Paris, de Villeneuve wrote the tale which introduced the key elements we still know today, from the rose to the singing wardrobe. And she got exactly no credit for it for a very long time.
Rather than focus on the Brothers Grimm entirely, Jubber dedicates his fourth part to Dortchen Wild, one of the young women who told them tales, most famously Hans and Gretel and Rumpelstilskin. Tracking her influence on the brothers, from the stories she told them to her marriage to Wilhelm, Jubber shines a light on a forgotten woman. From here we move further afield, to Ivan Khudiakov's rollercoaster of a life. Brilliant from childhood, he published his first collection of Russian fairy tales before the age of 22, but that's only where the rollercoaster starts. Khudiakov actually, unlike the Brothers Grimm, traveled through the land collecting and transcribing tales from "the common folk" and for him these tales were a crucial part of a potential revolution. This drive did not end well for him. From revolutionary Russia part 6 hops to medieval India and Somadeva's The Ocean of the Stream of Stories, or Kathasaritsagara. A beautiful collection that combines storytelling with mythology and religion, it is a major work by a mostly mysterious man. Not much is known about Somadeva, but Jubber brilliantly evokes Kashmir for the reader, allowing us to appreciate what an impact storytelling could have had. The Fairy Tellers ends with perhaps the most famous teller, Hans Christian Andersen. While he does not need to be rescued from obscurity, his life does demonstrate the saving grace of story telling like no other. Constantly searching for recognition and love, Andersen's stories create an entire world in which many of us have found a home.
The Fairy Tellers ends with a rousing ode to fairy tales, with a strong emphasis on their beauty but also their grace. While fairy tales are hard to define, they share the trait of having to be told. A written fairy tale is different to one that is told, whether actively by a parent to a child or passively through a framing device. They must somehow forge a connection between two people, through the shared intimacy of a shared story. Nicholas Jubber shares his journey with us, showing us what he saw in Aleppo before it was bombed, how he commisserated with the abused statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, and how Naples impressed him. The reader gets to travel with him and share in the stories he finds. The Fairy Tellers is almost like a fairy tale in that sense itself, full with a sense of magic and timelessness, and yet just odd enough here and there that you can't help but cock your head. His research and skill saves some of the above tellers from obscurity, at least for me, and made them as dear to me as the fairy tales they told themselves. And that is truly what a good story is meant to do, create a connection.
The Fairy Tellers is a beautiful journey into the history of the telling of tales. Told with a genuine personal touch, Jubber's book is a must-read for any fairy tale lover like myself!
URL: https://universeinwords.blogspot.com/...
January 20, 2022
For me, there is something endlessly fascinating about fairy tales. I've loved them since I was old enough to listen and still enjoy reading tales from enchanted forests, of witches and princesses, princes and demons. That the stories span history and continents, folklore and legend, is what makes each fairy tale so unique.
In The Fairy Tellers the author takes us a comprehensive journey into this magical world of landscape and culture, explaining the history behind the stories, the inspiration and the beguiling nature of tales from storytellers which have been handed down generation by generation until they have become as intrinsic a part of our collective culture as the air we breathe.
Reading like a travelogue and breaking down the book into seven distinct parts we get to learn more about the origins and connections of some of our well known fairy tales. I especially enjoyed the fairy story which heads each chapter and which whisk us away to a magical world. The quirky line drawings which are interspersed within the text also add a lovely sense of atmosphere.
Beautifully written, extensively researched, and as descriptive as a history book, I found The Fairy Tellers completely absorbing. Dipping into and out of the book, at whim, I discovered things I didn't know about the origins of the long lost fairy-tellers, those shadowy people, whose bright imagination once brought all our classic fairy tales to vibrant life.
In The Fairy Tellers the author takes us a comprehensive journey into this magical world of landscape and culture, explaining the history behind the stories, the inspiration and the beguiling nature of tales from storytellers which have been handed down generation by generation until they have become as intrinsic a part of our collective culture as the air we breathe.
Reading like a travelogue and breaking down the book into seven distinct parts we get to learn more about the origins and connections of some of our well known fairy tales. I especially enjoyed the fairy story which heads each chapter and which whisk us away to a magical world. The quirky line drawings which are interspersed within the text also add a lovely sense of atmosphere.
Beautifully written, extensively researched, and as descriptive as a history book, I found The Fairy Tellers completely absorbing. Dipping into and out of the book, at whim, I discovered things I didn't know about the origins of the long lost fairy-tellers, those shadowy people, whose bright imagination once brought all our classic fairy tales to vibrant life.
Read
May 4, 2023Once upon a time: yes.
Happily ever after: no.
Happily ever after: no.
November 4, 2023
3.5!
An interesting look at the story tellers behind the fairy tales. Everyone knows the tale of Aladdin, but not many know of the life of its author. An interesting read, but a little slow in parts.
An interesting look at the story tellers behind the fairy tales. Everyone knows the tale of Aladdin, but not many know of the life of its author. An interesting read, but a little slow in parts.
May 3, 2022
4.5 stars
I am grateful to the publisher Nicholas Brealey for sending me an advanced copy of this book for review.
This book met most of my expectations for a book that promises to shed light on the origins of fairy tales and those people who are responsible for the popularization of the fairy tale genre. The author did two interesting things; he made the distinction between people who collected then distributed tales and people who were the originators of fairy tales. This is an important distinction to make because certain people are credited with many of the popular fairy tales; however, there is a distinction between those people who traveled to gather folk tales and traditional stories to make them available to the general public ,and people who were the masterminds behind their own stories
Fairy tales are important culturally for many reasons. These stories are all set in specific locations and during defined periods of time, which allow us to get a look into what the societies of the time through the types of stories that developed during that era. The book also noted that as time progresses and societies evolve the content of fairy tales has changed to accommodate that, and much of the content has been adjusted over time to fit the palates of the modern-day consumers. Content that would be considered quite dark and sometimes inappropriate by today's standards has been switched out deliberately for safer options (he gives examples of this).
Another thing I enjoyed from this book was that it did put a lot of the fairy tellers in context of each other. So not only did it give us a feel for the society each of these individuals operated within, but it also showed how they were connected and if they were acquainted with each other during their careers. Of course, this book really focused on the fairy tales that originate in Europe. These are the stories that most people in the western world are familiar with, but I would have liked a more global focus for this work which would have made it even more interesting.
I recommend this for readers in general, especially people who are interested in history, the origins of the fairy tales that provide so much inspiration for modern day writers and upon which so many works of literature have been based.
I am grateful to the publisher Nicholas Brealey for sending me an advanced copy of this book for review.
This book met most of my expectations for a book that promises to shed light on the origins of fairy tales and those people who are responsible for the popularization of the fairy tale genre. The author did two interesting things; he made the distinction between people who collected then distributed tales and people who were the originators of fairy tales. This is an important distinction to make because certain people are credited with many of the popular fairy tales; however, there is a distinction between those people who traveled to gather folk tales and traditional stories to make them available to the general public ,and people who were the masterminds behind their own stories
Fairy tales are important culturally for many reasons. These stories are all set in specific locations and during defined periods of time, which allow us to get a look into what the societies of the time through the types of stories that developed during that era. The book also noted that as time progresses and societies evolve the content of fairy tales has changed to accommodate that, and much of the content has been adjusted over time to fit the palates of the modern-day consumers. Content that would be considered quite dark and sometimes inappropriate by today's standards has been switched out deliberately for safer options (he gives examples of this).
Another thing I enjoyed from this book was that it did put a lot of the fairy tellers in context of each other. So not only did it give us a feel for the society each of these individuals operated within, but it also showed how they were connected and if they were acquainted with each other during their careers. Of course, this book really focused on the fairy tales that originate in Europe. These are the stories that most people in the western world are familiar with, but I would have liked a more global focus for this work which would have made it even more interesting.
I recommend this for readers in general, especially people who are interested in history, the origins of the fairy tales that provide so much inspiration for modern day writers and upon which so many works of literature have been based.
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