New project. In order to better familiarize myself with the fairy tale cannon, once a month I’m going to read and examine a fairy story. Preferably not super popular stories, I’m looking for unusual stuff.
I want to do this for my own edification, and also to give my blogging some structure. I like fairy tales as a genre, and love retellings. I like to write them, when I can come up with something suitably different.
My definition of fairy story may verge into folk lore at times, as I’m planning to dip into some books I have of Irish and Russian stories. I don’t mean any cultural affront.
There are hundreds of stories out there. Just doing all of the Grimm tales, at a rate of once a month, would take 17 years. (4+ years if done weekly, but that feels excessive.)
You can find a listing of all the fairy tales as I finish them here.
Here are some sources I’ll be starting with:
- The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Knickerbocker Edition)
- Hans Christian Anderson
- Old Peter’s Russian Tales
- Irish Myth
- The Complete Fairy Books of Andrew Lang (Golden Deer Classics)
- SurLaLune Fairy Tales
- Ballets, operas, and other theatre
I hope you’ll enjoy this review of the strange and the charming.
New posts will go up on the last day of each month, so we’ll start on February 28.
Photo: TimOve‘s Fairy Tale carriage