history and criticism

A collection of fairy tales that have lasted throughout the years, "The Classic Fairy Tales" also offers many essays by the experts in fairy tale. The very best critics including Jack Zipes and Maria Tater, have written well-thought out essays varying from Disney's involvement in fairy tales to the sexuality of these tales. These essays along with the eight stories (Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Cinderella, Bluebeard, Hansel and Gretel, four short tales by Hans Christian Anderson, and three by Oscar Wilde) and you get a book which will help you understand not only the tales themselves, but the ideologies, social connections, and cultural importance. This book is definitely a good read.

An excellent book if you are struggling with the aquisition of variant sources for a particular fairy tale. A compendium of the well known, and the not so well know fairt tales, this book offers various incantations of 8 fary tales in their entirity. Following this, of particular interest to myself, are written criticisms and analysis of such tales by some of the most recognised names in fairy tale writing including Jack Zipes. Regardless of whether this book contains the tale you are looking for, the broader text that the book offers is certainly worth a look. A much more generalised idea is portrayed with regard to such topics as social origins, cultural resilience and the cultural implications and history of fairy tales as an independent genre. This book serves to bridge the gap between fairy tales that seem to bear no relationship to each other by looking at how these tales have come to be what they are.

I was glad to find this volume, which offers different versions of popular fairy tales and shows their cultural variation. Commentary is helpful and to the point, with good bibliographical resources. I needed to find a guide to Cinderella stories and this gave me just what I needed and more. A good antidote to Bettelheim's overly Freudian interpretations of fairy tales.