Fairy Tales
Classic Tales ·
Into the Woods ·
Selchies ·
Sir Orfeo
"The realm of
fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things:
all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars
uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy
and sorrow sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself
fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the
tongue of the traveller who would report them. And while he is there
it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gate should be
shut and the keys be lost."
- -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," in The Monsters and
the Critics and Other Essays
"The fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains
and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is
inward, into the lands of the soul. The dark path of the fairy tale forest
lies in the shadows of our imagination, the depths of our unconscious.
To travel to the wood, to face its dangers, is to emerged transformed by
this experience. Particularly for children whose world does not resemble
the simplified world of television sit-coms ... this ability to travel inward,
to face fear and transform it, is a skill they will use all their lives.
We do children--and ourselves--a grave disservice by censoring the old tales,
glossing over the darker passages and ambiguities..."
- -- Terri Windling, "White as Snow: Fairy Tales and Fantasy," in
Snow White, Blood Red
Classic Fairy Tales on the Net
The Brothers Grimm.
Grimm's Fairy Tales
includes 209 tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, probably
based on the translation by Margaret Hunt
called Grimm's Household Tales. This site is part of the
Universal Library at Carnegie
Mellon University.
Märchen
der Gebrüder Grimm includes electronic texts of 300 tales and variants,
in German. New !
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books. Thirteen volumes are
now available as searchable hypertext at Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
(New URLs):
Hans Christian Andersen's
Fairy Tales
and Stories includes 127 tales in the 1872 English translation by
H. P. Paull.
Three English Fairy Tale Collections from
the Internet Sacred Text Archive:
Contes de Fée, the adult fairy tales of France.
General Resources
SurLaLune Fairy Tales, a survey site by
Heidi Anne Heiner, features 35 annotated tales with
classic illustrations, links, and discussion boards. Updated
Folktexts, D.L. Ashliman's
extensive collection of Folklore and Mythology Electronic Text links at the University of Pittsburgh.
The Fairy Tale Project: a Multimedia Bridge from Language to Literature,
undertaken by Germanists at Southwestern University, Ursinus College, and Georgetown University.
Folk and Fairy Tales from
Rick Walton's Online Library.
Tales of Wonder: Folk and Fairy Tales from Around the World.
Digging Deeper
Cinderella. The
Cinderella Project at the University of Southern Mississippi, edited
by Michael N. Salda, is an archive of texts and images
containing a dozen English versions of "Cinderella,"
representing some of the more common
varieties of the tale from the English-speaking world in the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Materials
to construct this archive were drawn from the
de Grummond Children's Literature Research Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi.
The earliest text is from the 1729 edition of
Perrault's
Histories. New URL.
Cinderella
Stories is part of David K. Brown's Children's
Literature Web Guide at the University of Calgary.
Cinderella:
Ashes, Blood, and the Slipper of Glass, an essay by Terri Windling
from Realms of Fantasy magazine at
the Endicott Studio. New URL.
Little Red Riding Hood.
The Little Red Riding
Hood Project, like the Cinderella Project, is based at
the University of Southern Mississippi, and uses the resources of
de Grummond Children's Literature Research Collection. New URL.
Red
Riding Hood: A Multimedia Edition (in English)/Rotkäppchen:
Eine Multimedia-Ausgabe (in German) at the Fairy Tale Project,
Ursinus College, includes Le petit chaperon rouge
by Charles Perrault.
Little Red Riding Hood by
A'Lisa Ratledge at the University of Tennessee, with text, annotations, and notes.
The Path of Needles or Pins: Little Red Riding Hood,
an essay by Terri Windling from Realms of Fantasy magazine, also at the Endicott Studio. New !
Jack the Giant-Killer.
The Jack
and the Beanstalk and Jack the Giant-Killer Project, also at the University of Southern Mississippi. New URL.
Snow White.
Snow White
by Kay E. Vandergrift, a "scholarly resource for all those interested in folk
and fairy tales and, more specifically, in the tale Snow White." Features
texts, illustrations,
Snow White, links to seven
versions of the tale, from D. L. Ashliman's Folktexts.
Snow, Glass, Apples:
the story of Snow White, an essay by Terri Windling from Realms of Fantasy magazine, also at the Endicott Studio. New URL.
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26 December 2005