Library Essentials Month: Andrew Lang's Colored Fairy Books

   

Today's library essential is pretty much a library unto itself, but easily "owned" by every reader here. As you can see, I am talking about Andrew Lang's famous collection of 12 books in his Colored Fairy Book series. I won't list them all here, just provide covers and links to print versions from Dover at Amazon. I own all of these books and they sit within easy reach on my shelf despite their ready availability on the internet.

This series was multicultural a century before that word was used so imperatively. It also--even a hundred years later--has tales that haven't been translated into English anywhere else. Then there are the wonderful illustrations by Henry Justice Ford and G. P. Jacomb Hood.

   

Then there's the secret knowlege that much of this series was translated and edited by women despite Andrew Lang's name on the cover. He was the big name and had brand recognition so his name is on the cover, but his wife and other women were the primary editors and translators. He often acknowledges them as such in his introductions.

   

The colored fairy books were the introduction to fairy tales for several generations and are still fairly well known today. I see random references to them in other books--just this past week a character in a book I was skimming kept referring to the Green Fairy Book.

But in the end, the treasure trove of hundreds of tales from around the world gathered into this small library is a wonder and an essential in my library. You can see the old editions on Google Books, even download PDFs of the scans, or find editions on Gutenberg, or if you need a quick list and sorting capabilities of the entire library, I recommend the collection at Mythfolklore.net. The illustrations aren't there, but you can sort the text by author, country, book, etc.

So that's an easy addition to your own folklore library. Makes up for some of the more expensive titles I'll still be featuring this month.

Photo Stills from the Lily Collins Snow White (2012)

So there's been a media blitz the last few days of images from the upcoming Snow White starring Lily Collins. So I thought I would share. This one is definitely aiming to be the antithesis of the Kristen Stewart version which will compete practically head to head with it. This one, as yet untitled, will be released March 16, 2012.

What do you think of these costumes? I'm seeing an Oscar nod, to be sure. The designer is Oscar-winning costume designer Eiko Ishioka (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), so that isn't a stretch of the imagination. All of this reminds me of the second (first?) Star Wars trilogy when Amidala and her retinue were given grand and large to wear but without an Oriental influence this time. Although I keep thinking of Bjork when I see that atrocious swan headpiece. I collect and wear hats, folks. I put a lot of things on my head no one else would imagine. But that swan, never!

From Entertainment Weekly which tells a little more than I blockquote here:

It’s at this ball where Snow White (Abduction‘s Lily Collins) infiltrates the court in hopes of persuading a prince (The Social Network’s Armie Hammer) to help her overthrow the murderous usurper. However the queen has already set her cougar eyes on him.

The script, originally by Melisa Wallack, was rewritten by Jason Keller who recently did Machine Gun Preacher, (so expect a little more edge than the Disney take on this material.)

Like many evil-doers, this queen maintains a phony cheerful demeanor in public, and prefers not to get her own hands dirty with such menial issues as murdering her step-daughter, which is the only way to maintain her place on the throne. “She outsources her evil, just like most people,” says Tarsem. “I wanted a person who is just schizophrenic. She’s a person who would just do all the evil she needs to do to stay in power.”

Luckily for Snow White, that means she can remain undetected for a while and attempt to unseat the woman who is destroying her late father’s kingdom.

She has some helpers, of course. Seven of them.

Library Essentials Month: The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories by Angela Carter

It's Friday so today's library essential is a fiction book, The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories by Angela Carter. If it isn't the number one most referenced fairy tale related fiction, it's certainly in the top five. The Bloody Chamber is a collection of short stories by Carter interpreting fairy tales for an adult audience. It is not light reading. It is not easy reading on the emotional level at all, although the prose itself is very readable. Carter's work has been studied over and over again and will continue to be so. This book continues to influence fiction writers who play with fairy tales, too, directly and indirectly.

I had heard of the book and was strongly recommended it by my mentor when I was finishing high school. It was a shocking experience--not comfortable at all--when I finally read it and I was glad it had taken me a few years to find it. (I was a young student and ignorant of interlibrary loans or special ordering. I grabbed the book when I finally saw it sitting oh so casually on a bookstore shelf.)

The title story, "The Bloody Chamber," is a Bluebeard retelling and the version that most impacts my own impressions of the tale. It is why I first annotated Bluebeard when SurLaLune was in its conceptual stage instead of choosing my beloved Beauty and the Beast instead.

Anyway, this is a slim volume and easily accessed these days. If you are serious about fairy tales in modern times, you need to be familliar with this book. It's dark. It's gloomy. It's not my usual taste, but it cannot be missed.

And once you've read it, there is a ton of scholarship out there to find including Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale (Marvels & Tales Special Issues). If you don't own either, I'd order both at the same time. It just saves time and shipping.

Coming in 2013: Teenage Fairytale Dropouts

From Teenage Fairytale Dropouts Gets Happy Ending by Ramin Zahed:

Anima Estudios (Mexico), SLR Productions (Australia) Home Plate Entertainment (U.S.) and Telegael (Ireland) have announced that their new animated co-pro Teenage Fairytale Dropouts has been greenlit. The 52 x 11’ comedy TV series centers on three best friends and children of famous fairytale characters who are determined to be themselves, regardless of what their parents want them to be.

The series is slated for broadcast in 2013 but not distribution information is available yet.
And for more info on the series, this is from one production company's website, SLR Productions:

FAIRY TALE LAND – THE NEXT GENERATION!

It's tough being a teenager. School. Family. Social life. Social networks. It's a lot of pressure, especially if you're expected to follow in your parents’ footsteps and become, say, a doctor or a lawyer or a giant or a… Hey, wait a minute. A giant?!

Yes. A giant. Or worse, a Tooth Fairy.

Now that’s pressure.

So imagine if your parents were iconic fairytale characters with celebrity status who can cast amazing spells, fly on tiny fairy wings or take out an entire village with a single stomp of their big toe? Wouldn’t that make your teen life even harder?

Yup. Especially if you're like Jeremiah, Trafalgar and Fury and you've got your own ideas about what’s important in life!

Fairy Tale Estates is a fantastical world where people live in shoes and gingerbread houses. The highest-rating reality show is about three pigs and a wolf trying to make a go of it in a one-bedroom cottage. Despite the enchanted setting Jeremiah, Trafalgar and Fury have typical teen dramas with their family, friends and school, only with a fairy tale twist!

A little more from “Teenage Fairytale Dropouts” Greenlit for Animated Series by Chris Arrant:

Jeremiah maybe the son of The Giant from Jack and the Beanstalk but that doesn’t mean he’s going to follow in his father’s enormous footsteps, stomping villages and eating people. Besides, he still has some growing up to do, literally. Jeremiah may be a tween but he’s still waiting for his “giant” growth spurt.

And Fury, maybe the daughter of the Tooth Fairy but dental remuneration is not in her future — “way too creepy”. Plus, there’s the embarrassing fact that her fairy wings haven’t…ah… sprouted yet. Then there’s Trafalgar, one of Merlin’s many nephews, who actually has potential — if he just didn’t lack so much focus in his hocus pocus.

Together this trio is out to prove that even in the wacky, up-side-down, unexpected world of Fairytale Estates – you can be your own giant, fairy or wizard – as long as you have your friends along for the “souped-up” pumpkin carriage ride of your life.

So what do you think about that fairy tale fans?

Advertising: Katy Perry as Snow White for GHD

I bet you wouldn't have guessed that the most visited post on the SurLaLune Blog is for an old post about the fairy tale inspired GHD ad campaign. It regularly stays in the top five, usually the top one although the post on the Princess and the Pea craft fights for first regularly. Anyway, that popularity verifies for me that the GHD fairy tales campaign must be successful.

So it comes as no surprise that when GHD hired Katy Perry as their new celebrity spokesmodel, they chose Snow White for inspiration. Here are the two new photos making the publicity rounds this week. And, yes, the second one is supposed to be Perry as Snow White. Huh? Very "loose" interpretation, I think.

From the press release:

Today world leading professional hair styling brand ghd announces the signing of music sensation Katy Perry as the new face of the brand. Working in close collaboration with indisputably one of the most talented women in music today, the association will kick off over the next few months with an exciting new multimedia global brand campaign recently shot by world renowned photographer David LaChapelle.

I wonder if there will be more fairy tales starring Katy Perry in our future?

Library Essentials: Picking a Grimm Translation

Today's library essential is a reprint of an old post about Grimms' Fairy Tales collections. In a nutshell, I rely most heavily on my copies of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes and Grimm's Household Tales, with the Author's Notes translated and edited by Margaret Hunt with an Introduction by Andrew Lang, originally published in 1884, and reprinted by Singing Tree Press in 1968. The Hunt translation is problematic but it is the most complete--although edited--English version of the Grimms' notes to the tales. It is also very difficult to find at times--the many editions online barring the one on SurLaLune claim to have the notes, but don't. The SurLaLune doesn't have all the notes either because I've never had the time to finish editing them. The edition is actually two volumes with a total of 454 and 598 pages respectively and about 25% of that page count is notes.

Here's the post in its entirety:

A fairly regular question over the years has been what version of Grimms I use. I have addressed the issue a little on SurLaLune--it is buried at the bottom of the page of the Grimms collection on SurLaLune here, but I'll quote the essential info here:

 

In the 21st century, two of the most accurate and best translations of the Grimms' tales are by Ralph Manheim and Jack Zipes. The Zipes translation, currently in a third edition, includes extra fragments and earlier manuscripts, but many readers prefer Manheim's translations. The choice is aesthetic and should be decided by the individual reader. However, if you are looking for a reliable English translation, I recommend selecting either one or both of these translations.

Still, that one doesn't describe my particular methods and madness, so for today, I thought I would share a little more.

First of all, I do not use just one version of Grimms, for a multitude of reasons, a few of which I'll discuss here. I liken it to asking a Bible scholar which version of the Bible they read. The answer would be several! My list is much shorter, but definitely numbers more than one.

I am not a proficient German reader without much painstaking effort. (With Romance languages, especially French, I am MUCH more fluent.) So I usually rely on translations into my native English, of which there are an abundance.

Finding a reliable translation can be tricky. I don't have the time and inclination to discuss the issues--besides which they are not my specialty--so I will instead recommend a wonderful thesis by Martin James Sutton: The sin-complex: a critical study of English versions of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen in the nineteenth century in comparison with the German originals. A shortened version was printed into a book, but is difficult to find and out of print to boot. The good news is that the thesis is available in full online for your edification from The University of Auckland. I so appreciate when this happens! The thesis is provided as a PDF in three parts, all of which are linked from the handling page. Here's the abstract, too:

This thesis investigates the English versions of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen (= KHM) published between the years 1823 and 1884, i.e. from the first translation by Edgar Taylor and David Jardine, German Popular Stories (1823 and 1826), to the first complete edition of the Grimms’ collection of stories and notes by Margaret Hunt, Grimm’s Household Tales (1884). Each of the first eleven chapters deals with a specific English edition and gives an analysis of one or more stories from that edition together with the texts of the German original. The two versions, German and English, are placed alongside each other in parallel columns to facilitate comparison. The twelfth chapter takes the final paragraph of one story, ‘Sneewittchen’ (KHM 53), and examines the seven different English versions of it in the editions discussed in the previous chapters. The final chapter compares the quality of English translations of the KHM in the nineteenth century with that of the Grimms’ sole venture in translating tales in the English language into German, viz. Wilhelm Grimm’s Irische Elfenmärchen (1826). Included as an appendix is a tabulated concordance of the contents of the twelve major editions discussed in this thesis. The investigation shows that the areas deemed to be sensitive ones by English translators were those which had to do with what Darton (Children’s Books in England, 1982, p.99) has singled out as ‘a deep-rooted sin-complex’ in England. Any story that touched on the issues of religious belief and superstition, the human body and its physical nature, violence and evil, and the intense emotions felt by human beings which prompt them to commit violent and destructive acts, was inevitably viewed with concern and mistrust, especially by purveyors of children’s literature in the nineteenth century. All these issues, as well as the element of fantasy which so readily admits and entertains them, were prone to considerable revision by successive translators of the KHM.

In other words, Sutton explains the issues with various early translations of Grimms. He includes references to later translations such as Manheim and Zipes, overall supporting the consensus that these are two of the best translations available today, and ever, in English.  Professors across the land agree for either one of these are most commonly assigned as textbooks for classes using fairy tales.

Personally, I use the Zipes much more often than the Manheim simply because there are extras included--and added in subsequent editions since it is now in its third edition.  My needs are for as much material as possible with a reliable translation.  The Manheim is excellent, too, and sufficient for most people's needs.

However, the nature of SurLaLune requires a public domain text which makes Sutton's The Sin Complex a helpful resource.  Years ago, thanks to availability I chose to depend primarily on Margaret Hunt's translation for the website.  It appears quite often in printed versions today, sometimes uncredited.  Of the many nineteenth century editions, it is considered one of the most reliable and is also one of the most easily attainable.  I have a reprint version which also includes the Grimms' notes to the tales, at least the best English translation of them available.  Most print editions of Hunt's do not include the Grimms' extensive notes.  The notes are problematic, a strange mesh of Hunt's own knowledge and the Grimms, but they are available, more than I can say for other translations.  Year ago, I scanned the notes and started editing them to include on SurLaLune.  Many are available, although I have never finished editing all of them. 

When I am looking for kid-friendly versions of the popular tales, I usually use versions found in Andrew Lang's colored fairy books.  When I first started SurLaLune 12 years ago, those were the most accessible for me and thus ended up as many of the annotated versions on SurLaLune.

At times, I also use D. L. Ashliman's site where he has translated many of the most popular tales himself with his own notes and occasional comparisons. 

  

For the armchair reader not as concerned with the strictly academic, I also recommend Maria Tatar's The Annotated Brothers Grimm.  It only provides many of the most popular tales, but the introductions and annotations are informative for most readers and includes illustrations.  The Opies' The Classic Fairy Tales is not strictly Grimms, but provides some more insight into the most popular tales as well as some from other sources.  Finally, it is out of print again, but Grimm's Grimmest is another standard recommendation for those seeking the "grittier" versions of some Grimms--there aren't many tales there, but they are presented grittier than the standard Grimms.  The versions in there rely on the earlier, less edited, tales from the Grimms.

So the simplest answer if you just want to have one version of Grimms on your shelf would be to choose the Zipes translation or the Manheim, if you prefer it aesthetically. You may choose to supplement it with many of the versions mentioned here if you want more information.

Also of note here is a new translation of the 40 most popular Grimms, translated by Maria Tatar as The Grimm Reader. It is not a complete Grimms but offers a new translation of the tales for those looking for a new version to compare and contrast.  I haven't seen it yet, but it will be the newest translation available from a respected scholar.