Ever since almost exactly a hundred years ago the Grimms produced their Fairy Tale Book, folk-lorists have been engaged in making similar collections for all the other countries of Europe, outside Germany, till there is scarcely a nook or a corner in the whole continent that has not been ransacked for these products of the popular fancy. The Grimms themselves and most of their followers have pointed out the similarity or, one might even say, the identity of plot and incident of many of these tales throughout the European Folk-Lore field. Von Hahn, when collecting the Greek and Albanian Fairy Tales in 1864, brought together these common formul of the European Folk-Tale. These were supplemented by Mr. S. Baring-Gould in 1868, and I myself in 1892 contributed an even fuller list to the Hand Book of Folk-Lore. Most, if not all of these formul, have been found in all the countries of Europe where folk-tales have been collected. In 1893 Miss M. Roalfe Cox brought together, in a volume of the Folk-Lore Society, no less than 345 variants of Cinderella and kindred stories showing how widespread this particular formula was throughout Europe and how substantially identical the various incidents as reproduced in each particular country. It has occurred to me that it would be of great interest and, for folk-lore purposes, of no little importance, to bring together these common Folk-Tales of Europe, retold in such a way as to bring out the original form from which all the variants were derived. I am, of course, aware of the difficulty and hazardous nature of such a proceeding; yet it is fundamentally the same as that by which scholars are accustomed to restore the Ur-text from the variants of different families of MSS. and still more similar to the process by which Higher Critics attempt to restore the original narratives of Holy Writ. Every one who has had to tell fairy tales to children will appreciate the conservative tendencies of the child mind; every time you vary an incident the children will cry out, That was not the way you told us before.? The Folk-Tale collections can therefore be assumed to retain the original readings with as much fidelity as most MSS. That there was such an original rendering eminating from a single folk artist no serious student of Miss Cox's volume can well doubt. When one finds practically the same ?tags? of verse in such different dialects as Danish and Romaic, German and Italian, one cannot imagine that these sprang up independently in Denmark, Greece, Germany, and Florence. The same phenomenon is shown in another field of Folk-Lore where, as the late Mr. Newell showed, the same rhymes are used to brighten up the same children?s games in Barcelona and in Boston; one cannot imagine them springing up independently in both places. So, too, when the same incidents of a fairy tale follow in the same artistic concatenation in Scotland, and in Sicily, in Brittany, and in Albania, one cannot but assume that the original form of the story was hit upon by one definite literary artist among the folk. What I have attempted to do in this book is to restore the original form, which by a sort of international selection has spread throughout all the European folks.

“Go to the little tree on your mother’s grave. Shake it and wish for beautiful clothes, but come back before midnight.” In the Brothers Grimm’s version of a persecuted heroine’s struggle to escape the hardships she experiences following her widowed father’s marriage to a cruel woman with two beautiful but mean daughters, there are impossible tasks and helpful birds, a new name and an ash-dress, a Prince and three balls, a wish-tree and dresses of silver and gold. Can Aschenputtel find happiness and a future full of promise, or will her family succeed in keeping her as their cinder maid? In one book, experience new translations of the first and seventh versions of Aschenputtel (Cinderella) alongside Allerleirauh (All Kinds of Fur), a close variant from the ‘Cinderella Cycle’ of fairytales. Also included is another ATU-510 type fairytale, The True Bride, taken from the final edition of the Brothers Grimm’s Children's and Household Tales. [Folklore Type: ATU-510: Cinderella and Catskin – A + B (Persecuted Heroine + Unnatural Love)]

The classical version of the most famous and beloved of all fairy tales is the one C.S. Evans adapted and then expanded in order to give his brilliant illustrator, Arthur Rackham, maximum opportunity to exercise his gifts. The product of their collaboration is one of the most wonderful editions we have of this, or any other, fairy tale.

Once upon a time a cruel King decided to betroth his motherless daughter to an Ogre in exchange for fifty wagons filled with silver. When the Princess learns what her father has done, she is horrified. But she is as clever as she is beautiful. Quickly, the Princess devises a plan to escape and, relying on her own spunk and good sense, ultimately marries the man she chooses for herself.

A 1st Place Inkitt Novel Contest Winner for January 2018 Selected as Feminist Book of the Month by F-BOM Book Club for Sep/Oct 2019 I'm not who they think I am. A docile girl who meekly obeys her stepmother and stepsisters. Some kind of sick angel who cheerfully bears their mistreatment. That's what I WANT them to think. Because then they won't suspect what I'm really up to. The ball, the prince - it's all part of my plan to come out on top. Stepmother and her demented daughters will pay for every floor I have scoured, every sneer I have borne. They don't know about the white magic, how I use it to enhance myself. They can't see that my heart is black as midnight, rotten as a poisoned apple. They're about to find out.