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Cover of The Turnip Princess And Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales

The Turnip Princess And Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales

by Franz-Xaver von Schönwerth, translated by Maria Tatar, illustrated by Engelbert Suss

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A rare discovery in the world of fairy tales—now for the first time in English Move over, Cinderella: Make way for the Turnip Princess! And for the “Cinderfellas” in these stories, which turn our understanding of gender in fairy tales on its head. With this volume, the holy trinity of fairy tales—the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen—becomes a quartet. In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schönwerth's work was lost—until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manu­scripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive. Now, for the first time, Schönwerth's lost fairy tales are available in English.…

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NPR Books We Love
"The history of this rediscovered collection is its own magic: Once upon a time, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth collected fairy tales from Bavaria, where they remained hidden for 150 years until their rediscovery. The tales (translated by Maria Tatar) are fascinating — free of bowdlerized retellings, they have all their original, fiercely oddball appeal. Some are echoes of familiar stories and some are new and occasionally bizarre, but all are alive with personality (lazy flax-harvesting maidens beware). It’s a collection equally at home in an academic library and a kid’s room — if your kids are ready for a little darkness in their fairy tales."
NPR Books We Love — 2015 · apps.npr.org