Fairy tales

FAIRY TALE RESOURCES ONLINE

Sur La Lune: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/
This site is run by Heidi Ann Heiner and is one of the best fairy tale resources online. It offers 49 annotated fairy tales with links to illustrations, similar tales across cultures, modern interpretations and discussions of their history, as well as a number of other fascinating links and resources.

Professor Ashliman’s FolkTexts: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html
Professor Ashliman offers a number of useful links, but perhaps the most helpful is his extensive encyclopedia of folk texts, clearly indexed, and offering extensively researched versions of well-known and lesser known folk and fairy tales.

Endicott Studio Journal of Mythic Arts:
The Journal of Mythic Arts, edited by Terri Windling and Midori Snyder, was a “pioneering online magazine dedicated to Mythic Arts: literary, visual, and performance arts inspired by myth, folklore, and fairy tales. It ran from 1997 – 2008, and although no longer active, you can still access its archives.

Terri Windling’s Website http://www.terriwindling.com/
This is the blog and website of fantasy author and editor Terri Windling. It has some fantastic articles, essays and links.

Sacred Texts Collections, e.g. http://sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/index.htm
Sacred Texts is a wonderful website indexing sacred texts from around the world. It is not specifically about fairy tales, but there are some extremely useful links, particularly in the “Celtic” section, which now provides online links to all of Andrew Lang’s fairy books.

The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy: http://www.sussexfolktalecentre.org/
Based at the University of Chichester, the Sussex Centre is an academic project which focuses on “the importance of fairy tales as a creative force in both literature and culture.” It organizes fairy tale and fantasy conferences and publishes Gramarye, a journal of fairy tale and folklore. 

In Print

Brian Attebery. Stories About Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014
A great starting point for analysis of myth, fantasy and fairy tale.

Vanessa Joosen. Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011.
A comprehensive discussion of contemporary fairy tale criticism.

Max Luthi. The Fairy Tale as Art Form and Portrait of Man. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987.
A historical classic, with some controversial and philosophical ideas about fairy tales.

Carol Mavor. Aurelia. London: Reaktion Books, 2017.
A new discussion of literature and culture through fairy tales.

Diane Purkiss. Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories. London: Penguin, 2000.
This is a fascinating account of the cultural history of fairies.

Maria Tatar. The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
An interesting discussion of the history of the Grimms and their stories.

Marie-Lousie Von Franz. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales. Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 1996.
A Jungian perspective on fairy tales.

Marina Warner. Once Upon a Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
A short introduction to Marina Warner’s fascinating explorations on fairy tale.

Marina Warner.  From the Beast to the Blonde. London: Vintage, 1994.
A longer historical explanation and adventure into the traditional oral art of the fairy tale.

Jack Zipes. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006.
First published in 1983, this is a classic exploration of fairy tales by professor Jack Zipes.

Jack Zipes. The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012.
A more recent text, this represents some of Zipes’ new thinking about the fairy tale, including thoughts about its history and cultural significance. 

Contemporary Re-Tellings and Fairy Tale Fictions

There are thousands out there, but these are just a few wonderful places to start.

Katherine Arden. The Bear and the Nightingale. Del Rey, 2017.

Kate Bernheimer, ed.My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. New York: Penguin, 2010.

Sharon Blackie. Foxfire, Wolfskin, and other stories of shapeshifting women. London: September Books, 2019.

Angela Carter. The Bloody Chamber. London: Penguin, 1993.

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, ed. Snow White, Blood Red. New York. Harper Collins, 1993 (Or any of the Datlow and Windling anthologies, listed here http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bookstore/datlowwindling.html) 

Emma Donoghue. Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins. Penguin, 1997.

Kate Forsyth. Bitter Greens. Melbourne: Random House, 2012.

Graham Joyce. Some Kind of Fairy Tale. London: Gollancz, 2012.

Kelly Link. Pretty Monsters. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2010.

Gregory Maguire. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. New York: Harper Collins, 1999.

Robin McKinley. Spindle’s End. London: Random House, 2011.

Naomi Novik. Uprooted. London: Pan Macmillan, 2016.

Jo Walton. Among Others. New York: Tor, 2010.

Catherine M Valente. Deathless. Corsair, 2013.

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