The Fairy Tale Cupboard

a new year and a new blog

2011-01-03T13:18:00.008Z

Happy New Year, everyone! New Year seems to be the time for big decisions and this one is something I've been deliberating over for quite a while.

For the time being I am going to put The Fairy Tale Cupboard into hibernation. The eagle-eyed may have noticed I haven't been posting very regularly recently. I've found it harder and harder to justify posting and keeping the listings up-to-date when I could be spending the tiny scraps of time I get to myself actually writing stories, which is what I most want to do. Also, I am passionate about fairy tales, but I'm passionate about the other types of fiction I read, write and edit too, and there have often been things I've wanted to post about that didn't really fit here. So, over the last couple of months I have been cautiously (and secretly) posting over at a new blog called Gathering Scraps. This one will mention fairy tales from time to time and it will gather together lots of other bits and bobs too. And, rather than allowing it to distract me from writing, I'm going to try to post more about what has been inspiring me and feeding into my work.

Thank you for reading, for linking to The Fairy Tale Cupboard and for all your kind and insightful comments. It has been a pleasure getting to know people through writing this blog.

I hope the year ahead brings you lots of happiness and everything you need.
Very best wishes,
Claire

The best place by the fire...

2010-12-23T12:02:00.005Z

It's a little bit naughty to embed these, I know, but I have tried and tried to get The Storyteller on DVD to no avail (copies of the first DVD release are very rare here and the definitive collection was never released in the UK).

I first watched the series on tv when I when I was seven, then somehow over the years I forgot all about it. When the lovely Faye Durston and Cate Simmons mentioned it to me earlier this year I still couldn't remember it, but the second I saw the opening on YouTube I was transported straight back into this magical world. Below is one of my favourite episodes. I think it's important we share The Storyteller so that he can't be forgotten. Hope you all have a wonderful, warm and happy festive season!

New Fairy Tales Issue 6 now online

2010-12-01T09:13:00.003Z

Here's the trailer to tempt you to read...

And here is the issue itself...

(this is a flash version of the magazine, there is also a PDF version available on our website)

Chagford Filmmaking Group

2010-11-25T10:18:00.006Z

Chagford Filmmaking Group, the intrepid group of fairy tale filmmakers from Devon, have got lots of exciting things going on at the moment. The clip above is the opening of their first feature film, Sir Lanval, a twelfth century fairy tale. They shot it in fifteen epic days in two countries on a budget of just £25,000!

This weekend, as part of the Fantasy, Faeirie and Visionary Arts event at the Flavel Arts Centre in Dartmouth, there is a Talk On The Filming of Sir Lanval by Elizabeth-Jane Baldry (director and co-writer of the film) on Saturday at 12noon. This will include clips from the film and a chance to hear about behind-the-scenes adventures, and tales of pigs, maggots and magical white horses appearing from nowhere. On Sunday 28th at 11.30am, there will be a Screening of Peerifool: An Orkney Fairytale - a tremendous tale about three little girls who outwit an ogre. And it's full of porridge fairies! (Film duration = 40mins).

Also currently at the Flavel is an Exhibition of Costumes and Other Delights from the film, which runs until the end of the month. And at Exeter Castle the Shared Legends Exhibition of newly commissioned artworks inspired by the Lanval story opens on the 6th December and runs until the 18th. And it features the work of internationally known painters, sculptors, and graphic artists such as Brian Froud, Wendy Froud and Alan Lee as well as young rising stars in the mythic arts field (there is a wonderful post by Rima Staines over at The Hermitage about her experience of creating work for the exhibition).

This is all part of the group's Shared Legends Project, a unique cultural exchange between two countries that share a rich mythic heritage, which has been funded by the European Union and South West Screen.

'Happily Ever After' exhibition

2010-11-22T22:07:00.006Z

'Happily Ever After' an exhibition of work by Su Blackwell opens at the Long and Ryle Gallery on Thursday 25th November and runs until the 18th December, 2010

Su says...

As in many recent works I will be focusing on fairy tales, with their haunting, dream-like atmosphere. This exhibition broadly explores the role of marriage within the fairy tale. In many fairy tales, marriage acts as a kind of a closing sequence for the “happy ending”, simply because it was an expected stage of life for women during the periods in which these tales were first told. In these new works, I question a different type of ending.

And the Long and Ryle site gives an insight into the way Su works...

Using a scalpel she cuts and glues the pages of books to create miniature dioramas glowing with lights in wood and glass boxes, like Victorian relics found in a museum of intrigue. She finds her books – or rather lets them find her – by trawling through second-hand book shops. She always reads the book first and this in turn inspires the work.

If you're in London I urge you to get to the exhibition, but if, like me, you're too far away there are at least lots of wonderful pictures to get lost in on Su's site.

Image: Jorinde and Jorindel, copyright Su Blackwell

Two fairy tale related calls for papers...

2010-11-17T10:38:00.008Z

George MacDonald among his Contemporaries
30 March 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS

A one day conference hosted by the School of English, University of St Andrews, Kennedy Hall, St Andrews, Scotland

George MacDonald (1824-1905) is most often discussed in terms of what came after: his role in the development of fantasy literature and his influence on writers such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Though providing valuable insights into MacDonald’s legacy, this emphasis tends to obscure his involvement in his own time. MacDonald was a Victorian. His works attest to his wide knowledge of his time and culture, and his deep engagement with the issues of the day.

George MacDonald among His Contemporaries looks to re-establish MacDonald’s place within his own context. We invite proposals for a variety of disciplines for papers and presentations which offer critical reinvestigation of MacDonald’s work. We particularly welcome papers that look beyond MacDonald’s fantasies to consider other aspects of his works.

Relevant topics might include:

examinations of MacDonald and social issues, such as women’s rights and suffrage, racism and abolition, poverty and social welfare, animal rights, et al.
genre criticism of MacDonald: historical fiction, sensationalism, romance, et al.
gothic influences on MacDonald
medievalism in MacDonald’s poetry and fiction.
MacDonald and science or pseudo-science: evolution, vivisection, and mesmerism
MacDonald’s literary criticism
MacDonald and Victorian readings of Shakespeare
critical re-examination of MacDonald’s poetry
the interplay of poetry and prose in MacDonald’s works
the interfacing of visual arts and MacDonald’s narratives, notably his connection to the Pre-Raphaelites
MacDonald’s role in the Scottish preaching tradition
MacDonald in relation to other Victorian literary figures: Dickens, Eliot, Kingsley, the Rossettis, Tennyson, Ruskin, et al.
MacDonald and Scotland: Burns, Scott, Hogg, the Highlands, et al.

Keynote speakers will be Stephen Prickett and David Robb.

Papers will be 20 minutes. Please submit a 300-word abstract, in .doc, .docx, or .pdf format, with biographical information to Ginger Stelle (gs345 [at] st-andrews.ac.uk) and John Patrick Pazdziora (jpp6 [at] st-andrews.ac.uk) before 15 January 2010.

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A two-day international conference hosted by the Film and Literature Programme of the University of York's Department of English and Related Literature in association with The Centre for Modern Studies

Myths and Fairy Tales in Film and Literature post-1900

25th-26th March 2011
(please note these are the new, confirmed dates and have been adjusted by one day since I first posted this)
CALL FOR PAPERS

This forthcoming conference invites renewed reflection on fundamental, inherited tales as these have found self-reinventing expression in film and literature post-1900. It seeks to interrogate the dramatic, poetic and visual character of culturally core stories (fairy/mythic/classical/religious/Shakespearean etc), the formal operations and cultural force of their variant tellings (and showings) across media and moment, and the ways in which their psychological, social, political and aesthetic functions have been interpreted and employed.

Abstracts are solicited for individual 20-minute papers on the theme of the conference (interpreted in literary or film terms, or both). Proposals of pre-constituted panels (composed of two or three 20-minute papers) are also welcome.

Questions informing case studies might include (without being limited to):
- Why do some stories endure across multiple retellings while others fall into neglect?
- What primal impulses are encoded, fears expressed or defused and/or desires satisfied in those that resurface repeatedly in altered guises?
- Which narrative elements and characters have proved largely stable across time and place, apparently immune to cultural disruption, and which have been gently or radically adjusted in response to other cultural-historical forces?
- How have particular post-1900 literary and screen engagements with culturally embedded stories appropriated, revivified and disseminated those inherited tales in distinctive and/or culturally illuminating ways?
- How have the behavioural models promoted, social imperatives implied, modes of telling adopted and artistic allegiances embraced in the ongoing lives of particular tales been revised over time to fit new circumstances, new audiences and new media?
- How have theories of transmission, narrative endurance and narrative change accounted for the culturally revealing reinventions of various fundamental story pools?
- Which theories of narrative transmission, inter-medial adaptation and/or inter-textuality can illuminate the ongoing life of a story most tellingly? (And, perhaps, which have proved interpretively diversionary or limiting?)

Panels have thus far been suggested on the following themes: classical subjects, scriptural/religious subjects, Shakespearean subjects, fairy tales for children, fairy tales for adults, the transculturing of inherited myths. Contributors are welcome to submit with these proposed panels in mind, or in any other area in line with the theme of the conference.

Abstracts of not more than 250 words should be submitted, not by attachment but within the body of the email, to: film-and-literature@events.york.ac.uk

Deadline for receipt of abstracts: Tuesday 21st December 2010.

A brief personal biog-sketch (not more than 100 words) including institutional affiliation, current appointment/stage of study, principal publication(s) (where applicable) and main research interests, should be included in the same email. All submissions will be responded to, and all contributors notified, by Tuesday 11th January 2011. Registration details to follow.

Conference chair: Judith Buchanan (judith.buchanan@york.ac.uk)

Addition to post: There are now more details about the conference here.

Illustration by Dorothy Lathrop from The Light Princess by George Macdonald via the chawed rosin

New tales online

2010-11-11T10:54:00.002Z

I have't had chance to dip into these yet because I'm busy putting Issue 6 of New Fairy Tales together, but there are lots of Hansel and Gretel tales to read in Issue 4 of Enchanted Conversation and the first issue of Wildberries, a new journal of mythic fantasy, is now online too.

Illustration by Kay Nielsen, from the book Hansel and Gretel and other Stories by the Brothers Grimm

Once upon a time... short story and poetry competition

2010-11-09T09:53:00.010Z

Two quick things you may want to know about this before you read further: 1. It's only open to UK based writers 2. There are two categories, under 16s which is free to enter and over 16s which has a £5 entry fee.

The Chapel Gallery in Ormskirk, Lancashire are looking for modern fairy tales and winter poems. Here are all the details you'll need to enter:

Two writing options and two age categories per option:

Short Story: A Modern Fairytale. Maximum words: 2000. Submission fee: £5.00. Junior Category entries free.

Poem: A Winter Poem. Maximum lines: 45. Submission fee: £5.00. Junior Category entries free.

Adult Category: Over 16. Junior Category: Under 16.

How to enter:
This competition is open to all UK based writers.
* Work submitted must be original and in English.
* Work submitted must be typed in Microsoft Word using Times New Roman font, size 12pt and double-spaced.
* Work should be stapled, bound or held together in a file. Loose sheets cannot be accepted.
* Include your name, age category, address, phone number and email on a cover page attached to the submission.
* Work must be submitted by post AND email to the Creative Writing Competition, Chapel Gallery (address below) AND via email to chapel.gallery@westlancs.gov.uk by Saturday 8 January 2011.

FREE workshops Places are limited. Book early to avoid disappointment.
Short Story Writing: Skelmersdale Library, Southway, Skelmersdale WN8 6NL. Saturday 27th November, 1.30 to 3.30pm.
Poetry Writing: Ormskirk Library, Burscough Street, Ormskirk L39 2EN. Saturday 4th December, 1.30 to 3.30pm.
Book through Chapel Gallery with £5.00 deposit to be returned at workshop on attendance.

Selection process:
The work will be judged by Professor Robert Sheppard, Professor of Poetry and Poetics and Programme Leader for the MA in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University with Ruth Heritage, Director, They Eat Culture / Lancashire Writing Hub and Helen Juste, Arts Development Manager, West Lancashire Borough Council. Works shortlisted will be displayed at the Chapel Gallery plus participating cafés and libraries.

Prizes:
A Modern Fairytale, Adult Category: £250 A Modern Fairytale, Junior Category: Story to be illustrated
A Winter Poem, Adult Category: £250 A Winter Poem, Junior Category: Poem to be illustrated

All prizewinning works will be published on the Chapel Gallery website and the websites of partners involved in the project. There will be a presentation event where prizes and certificates will be awarded and winners will have the opportunity to have their story or poem read aloud. Successful applicants will be contacted regarding the presentation date.

Video from the Boston Book Festival: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

2010-11-02T16:51:00.003Z

An absolutely fantastic opportunity to see Kate Bernheimer, Kelly Link and Kathryn Davis read from and discuss their stories from the new fairy tale anthology edited by Bernheimer My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, and to see commentary from Maria Tatar too...

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me at Boston Book Festival 2010 from Boston Phoenix on Vimeo.

Save our forests

2010-10-27T16:14:00.005+01:00

I don't think there's anything this vile coalition government we've ended up with here in the UK could do that would surprise me. So they're penalising the poor and the disabled, making them pay for the mistakes of super-rich bankers, they're slyly dismantling the welfare state under the false pretext of it being for our economic good. George Osborne's cuts will devastate lives across the UK, but not, alas, those of the greedy capitalists and idiotic politicians who got us into this mess. Now, looking round for somewhere else to swing the axe, they've hit upon our forests: they want to sell off more than half of them to private firms. This could mean the destruction of ancient forests to make way for golf courses, holiday parks and commercial logging.

Please consider taking a second to sign this petition. We have to start standing up to them on this and on all their other execrable plans.

Illustration 'Forbidden Forest' by Arthur Rackham via Children's Fantasy Illustrations

Quick Link: Fairy Tale Review's online goodies

2010-10-20T09:14:00.001+01:00

There are currently not one but two brilliant things available for free on the Fairy Tale Review website. The first is a web edition of the journal featuring lots of Little Red Riding Hood inspired short stories and poetry, and the second is a minicomic by Jennifer Parks called 'They Met in a Dream'. You can print the comic from a PDF and there are instructions on how to put it together. Lovely.

The Word Dress

2010-10-18T13:39:00.032+01:00

On Saturday I read a new fairy tale at the Lancaster Literature Festival. And I am incredibly lucky because I got to read it wearing this...

The dress was made by bridal designer Jennifer Pritchard Couchman from several copies of Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales (courtesy of Virago Press). The story I read, 'A Book Tale', was commissioned by Litfest and featured a dress made of grass and rain, a dress made of smoke and feathers, and, of course, a dress made from the pages of books. I love books more than almost anything, but I never expected to end up dressed in them. Wearing a dress made from over 2500 pages was one of the most peculiar and exciting things I've ever done!

There are lots, lots more pictures of the dress at every stage of the process here.

The Lancaster Literature Festival runs until the 24th October and there are still lots more fantastic events to come, including a reading tonight from Ali Shaw author of The Girl with Glass Feet, and a brilliant looking storytelling event on Wednesday called The Court of the Queen of Claywood Flats. The Word Dress will remain on display in The Storey throughout the festival.

All photographs by Jonathan Bean @Litfest. Creative Commons: some rights reserved.

Quick Link: Silverweed, the beginning

2010-10-15T19:50:00.000+01:00

Just a quick note to say that Chapter 1 part 1 of Dorlana Vann's new YA novel Silverweed is now online. She is serialising this dark new take on Little Red Riding Hood on her blog Supernatural Fairy Tales.

Fairy tale favourites...

2010-10-06T23:25:00.006+01:00

Katherine Langrish, over at fantastic children's literature blog Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, has been kind enough to nominate the cupboard for a Unicorn Glitter Award. The award was set up by fantasy writer Katherine Roberts to celebrate bloggers who 'post in the spirit of the enchanted mists'. To accept the award I need to nominate some favourites. This is a difficult task for me because I am terrible at choosing favourite anythings. So to make it a tiny (and I mean tiny) bit easier I am going to nominate favourites that are fairy tale related and that have a good link or two to go with them...

My favourite fairy tale book:
This is almost impossible to decide. To the right is a picture of the fairy tale related books currently living by my feet under my desk (so they are always close at hand!). There are others, too, in piles all over the house. But if I go off the book that is looking most worn, that I turn to most often, that represents everything I love about fairy tales it has got to be The Virago Book of Fairy Tales edited by Angela Carter (it's out of print but has now been published together with the second collection as Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales).

Carter was, of course, a brilliant fairy tale writer in her own right (The Bloody Chamber is another favourite) and a translator of tales too. In this book she turned gatherer of tales, and she pulled together an eclectic mix of stories with women at their hearts from all over the world. I love the sections she divided them into, they have titles like 'Brave, Bold and Wilful', 'Sillies' and 'Good Girls and Where it Gets Them'. And her introduction gives a real taste of her knowledge of, passion for, and interaction with fairy tales. This quote, in particular, often comes to my mind:

Ours is a highly individualized culture, with a great faith in the work of art as a unique one-off, and the artist as an original, a godlike and inspired creator of unique one-offs. But fairy tales are not like that, nor are their makers. Who first invented meatballs? In what country? Is there a definitive recipe for potato soup? Think in terms of the domestic arts. 'This is how I make potato soup.'

This is also the book in which I first discovered Mossycoat, one of my favourite tales (sadly that version is not available online but there is a Philip Pullman retelling here).

My favourite fairy tale film:
Another tough one. From my childhood I would say Labyrinth, after that Edward Scissorhands and, although I still love and watch both of those, for the last few years it has been Pan's Labyrinth (there are some snippets of Guillermo del Toro on fairy tales, and a lot else, over at io9).

My favourite fairy tale poem:
The wickedly good lines 'The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers./She whips a pistol from her knickers./She aims it at the creature's head/And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead' have been etched on my brain since childhood. The poem is 'Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf' by Roald Dahl and it's available online, along with a recording of Dahl reading it, here.

My favourite myth or legend:
The Buried Moon, it's a deliciously creepy tale. It was collected in the late 19th century in Lincolnshire, England from a girl of nine who said she'd heard it from her Gran. But in Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars Mrs Balfour noted 'I think it was tinged by her own fancy, which seemed to lean to eerie things, and she certainly revelled in the gruesome descriptions, fairly making my flesh creep with her words and gestures.' It was later collected as a fairy tale by Joseph Jacobs who removed the dialect (that's the version I've linked to above). Jacobs also noted that the tale had an unusually mythic quality.

My favourite enchanted creature:
Trolls. I have never quite stopped believing in trolls. I have to blame this on my parents' insistence that we re-enact Three Billy Goats Gruff whenever we went over a bridge (a tradition I'm continuing with my children). In my teens I loved a slightly bizarre children's programme called The Rottentrolls (which no one I talk to has ever heard of), and as an adult I've discovered John Bauer's wonderful trolls.

And finally, I need to recommend another blog. All the fairy tale blogs I read and enjoy are listed in the sidebar. If I have to pick just one that deserves recognition (they all do really) it is going to be the Fairy Tale Channel for fascinating and informative posts alongside new translations of the Grimms, and of Lithuanian, French and Icelandic tales too. It's a blog I return to frequently and always get enjoyably lost in.

Lovely things in the post...

2010-09-30T21:28:00.016+01:00

I get very excited when lovely things arrive in the post. A few days ago Su Mwamba from Enchanted Times sent me these...

The pictures really don't do these fairy tale newspapers justice. The attention to detail is wonderful, contents include articles like 'Baba Yaga still at large', a supplement on contemporary fairy tale literature, patterns and small ads, and each issue comes with a free gift, like an enchanted needle and thread or pre-enchanted nettle yarn. Su has an Etsy shop and you can find out more about Enchanted Times and read some content online here.

And then yesterday this arrived:

The Wychwood Fairies is the first book by Faye Durston, a good friend who is responsible for the fantastic art direction on Issue 5 of New Fairy Tales, the beautiful picture on our homepage and the banner on this blog.

This is like the Jolly Postman for lovers of stunning illustration and all things faerie—envelopes have letters in them, bits pull out, fairies pop-up. It is a beautiful thing. Again the pictures don't do it justice, you have to have it in your hands to appreciate how good it is.

And look, can you spot the New Fairy Tales picture anywhere?

And if I haven't tempted you enough yet, maybe this will...

Quick Link: new issue of Scheherezade's Bequest

2010-09-30T20:20:00.002+01:00

So much to read, so little time, but I will definitely be making time (or stealing some from somewhere) to read the 11th issue of Scheherezade’s Bequest.

The Magic Carpet Flight Manual

2010-09-22T13:43:00.010+01:00

**addition to post: the programme is now available to listen to online or download here**

The name of this programme alone makes me want to listen to it. The Magic Carpet Flight Manual will air online and on the BBC World Service this Friday (times here):

Web-dreaming one day, writer Cathy FitzGerald stumbled on a site belonging to a museum in Iran. It purported to tell the "true history" of the flying carpet and detailed its many uses – military, as a means of aerial attack; commercial, as a vehicle for the transport of goods; and cultural, as a device to help readers in the library at Alexandria reach the high books. The article appeared across the web, rarely with any caveat or credit.

In search of a "real" flying carpet, Cathy tracks down the article's author, Azhar Abidi, who helps her separate carpet fiction from carpet fact. She goes on to meet a physicist working on levitation in the quantum world, and a Japanese astronaut who took a carpet ride in space.

Cathy FitzGerald explores the past, present, and future of the magic carpet and wonders what our desire to defy gravity tells us about ourselves.
from the BBC website

I love the term 'web-dreaming', it sounds so much more inspirational and productive than the haphazard, frantic click-throughs I too often indulge in. Web-hunting, web-scrounging, web-sifting, web-tunnelling all come more easily to my mind, but from now on I will only web-dream. Funnily enough I came across the peculiar museum website mentioned a while ago whilst researching magic carpets for a previous carpet post.

The author of the fictional history of the carpet Azhar Abidi is a writer, born and raised in Pakistan, who now lives in Australia (thanks to Matt at Books and Adventures for the link to his blog). Marina Warner has also been interviewed for the programme and her fascinating podcast on magic carpets, which is well worth listening to, is still available online here.

Photograph by churl CC license: some rights reserved.

Dresses in fairy tales

2010-09-17T20:09:00.004+01:00

I have been thinking a lot about dresses recently because I've been commissioned by Lancaster Literature Festival to write a contemporary fairy tale featuring a dress made from the pages of old books. The dress itself is being made by designer and dressmaker Jennifer Pritchard Couchman, it will be exhibited throughout the festival and I get to wear it to read the story(!).

When I first started pulling together ideas for the tale I couldn't get the Disney Cinderella ball gown out of my head, which bothered me. A lot. I'm not a fan of the Disney versions of fairy tales, or of clothes worship or fashion in general. For the past four years I've spent most days dressed in scruffs accessorised with baby sick, snot, paint and porridge (in various combinations) and not been that bothered about it. But I can't deny the power of a beautiful dress.

Disney Princess culture may be malign, with its sparkly nylon tentacles gripped round the world's little girls (and their parents' credit cards), but Disney didn't invent the idea of the fairy tale dress as a garment of transformation. In the Perrault version of Cinderella, from 1697, Cinderella actually gets to wear two dresses to two balls, and after having her 'nasty rags' transformed into clothes made of 'cloth of gold and silver, all beset with jewels' by her godmother she silences the ballroom with her beauty and the King's son falls for her on first sight. (For an excellent dissection of the problems with this version, and the multitude of versions it's inspired, and a look at some more positive Ash Girl heroines I'd recommend Terri Windling's excellent essay Cinderella: Ashes, Blood, and the Slipper of Glass.)

In the Grimms' version of the tale the maltreated Ashenputtel gets to go to three dances and wear three dresses, each more magnificent than the last. There is no godmother but instead a little white bird, which brings the dresses when Ashenputtel makes a wish beneath the hazel tree she has planted on her mother's grave. And we're told 'when she went to the festival in the dress, no one knew how to speak for astonishment'.

In fairy tales spectacular dresses aren't only a magic ticket to get you into a ball, they can also be an important tool for bargaining with. In The Singing, Springing Lark the heroine finds her husband (who used to be a dove who used to be a lion who was really a prince) is about to be married to another woman, a princess (who used to be a dragon). She uses a dress given to her by the sun and 'as brilliant as the sun itself' to get a night with her lost husband...

The dress pleased the bride so well that she thought it might do for her wedding-dress, and asked if it was for sale? "Not for money or land," answered she, "but for flesh and blood." The bride asked her what she meant by that, so she said, "Let me sleep a night in the chamber where the bridegroom sleeps."

In Donkeyskin the beleaguered princess whose father wants to marry her is advised by her godmother to ask for a dress that can't be made. So she tells him she can't give him an answer until he has presented her with a dress that matches the sky, and when (after much coersion) he manages to get her a dress which looks 'as if it had been cut straight out of the heavens' she asks next for a dress of moonbeams and then one of sunshine. Each impossible dress is brought to her and it is instead the skin of an ass which affords her escape from the situation. Although, of course, the beautiful dresses come in handy for the happy ending.

Donkeyskin's fantastical sky dresses bring to my mind Max Lüthi's comments on dresses in fairy tales in Once Upon a Time On the Nature of Fairy Tales:

And in another Greek fairy tale, a fig, a nut, and a hazelnut each contain a dress. On one “the month of May could be seen with its flowers”; on the second “the heavens could be seen with its stars”: and on the third “the sea could be seen with its waves.” One cannot express more beautifully how the world is woven into the clothing of man in the fairy tale, how the enormous patterns of the cosmos are connected with man in a manageable and beneficial form, and how man is securely established in the realm of heaven and earth, and assimilates them both.

Whilst I've been writing my tale featuring dresses for the festival, I've collected together all kinds of dress links and other bits and bobs in an online scrapbook to inspire me. And I've discovered the taste for impossible dresses isn't confined to fairy tales, there have been real fads for dresses made of glass and of paper, there have been dresses made of chocolate and even hair.

The story I read will just be one of the fairy tale elements of the festival. Carol Ann Duffy will be reading her fairy tale The Princess' Blankets, Ali Shaw will be reading from his haunting novel The Girl with the Glass Feet, and Sara Maitland, author of many fairy tales, will be reading as part of the Great Short Fiction Day. And storyteller Dominic Kelly will be sharing Mossycoat with under 5s and their grown ups. And that's all just a fraction of what's going on in the wider festival which runs from the 15th to the 24th October. The full brochure is available here.

Both of the illustrations in this post are of the Grimms' tale Ashenputtel, the first by Arthur Rackham and the second by Elenore Abbott.

Quick Link: Fairy Tale Reflections

2010-09-17T15:56:00.011+01:00

YA fantasy author Katherine Langrish, writer of excellent folklore inspired fiction and the lovely children's literature blog Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, has launched a series of Friday fairy tale posts today with her reflections on The Juniper Tree. You can read her insightful thoughts on the tale here. And on forthcoming Fridays she will be hosting guest posts by other well-known fantasy writers about fairy tales. Definitely one to follow!

New Fairy Tales - call for submissions

2010-09-05T14:37:00.004+01:00

We are now inviting submissions for our sixth issue. You can find the full submission guidelines here. The deadline is the 20th October and the issue is due out at the end of November. Looking forward to reading your tales!

The beautiful picture above is by our very lovely art director Faye Durston.

Into the forest...

2010-09-02T22:11:00.011+01:00

This is one of those times I desperately wish I had a mossycoat I could put on to travel across country in an instant. Deloitte Ignite 2010 is an amazing looking three day festival of contemporary arts taking place at the Royal Opera House in London this weekend. It is being curated by Joanna MacGregor and the theme is forests. Here are a few snippets from their website to tempt you (or torment you—I'm sorry about that):

For the 2010 festival Joanna has taken her inspiration from forests: forests as a place of quiet, reflective beauty, mystery and discovery, as places of fairytale narrative, as well as metaphorical spaces. She has invited artists to create forests all over the Royal Opera House in different materials: recycled and reclaimed wood, organic materials, old costumes and mannequins, shimmering projections and reflecting pools. There are films, music and dance performances, soundscapes and installations.

Fairy tale highlights include:

Into the Woods: a cinema – unlike any you have visited – will occupy the Clore Studio Upstairs, as distinguished writer and cultural historian Marina Warner introduces and discusses a programme of fairytale-inspired films. The delicious little Russian-language animations Kuygorozh and Little Vasilisa (2007) partner the darker worlds of Joan Ashworth’s How Mermaids Breed (2002) and Alice Anderson’s The Night I Became a Doll (2009).

The German silhouette animator and film director Lotte Reiniger’s magnificently opulent and imaginative The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) was only discovered and reconstructed in the last few years, and is considered the world’s oldest-surviving feature length animation. Over the weekend it receives four screenings, with a wonderful contemporary score composed and performed live by WARP artist Mira Calix. Reiniger’s better known Fairytales – brief, endearing animations from 1922 – form the basis and backdrop of scorching performances from the Rumanian violinist Alexander Balanescu and Russian accordionist and singer Evelina Petrova, combining the brilliant virtuosity of improvisation with raw, aching qualities of Russian folk music and singing.

There are many more intriguing and tantalising descriptions of events and installations to explore on the website. I'd really recommend clicking though. And if you can get there, book and go and come back and tell us what it was like—the daytime events are free!

Because I will, unfortunately, be nowhere near London, or even a forest, this weekend I thought I would take solace in a couple of my favourite forest links. They are both from the treasure chest that is the JOMA archives: Into the Woods: On British Forests, Myth and Now is an interesting exploration of forests by poet Ruth Padel. The Green Man & the Green Woman: Art Inspired by Forest Myths features a fascinating essay by Terri Windling and is accompanied by beautiful artwork from Windling, Charles Vess, Alan Lee, the Frouds and others.

Photo by Graham Dean, used with permission.

The tales of William Palmer

2010-08-31T21:47:00.009+01:00

What if all the myths and folktales of these islands were true? And what if they were not only true but present now in our world? All the spirits, existing, as they have always existed, in the gaps between tower blocks, in the shadows under bridges, in the corner of our vision...
(from the Pilgrim programme info)

Stepping slightly off the crooked path of fairy tales and into the undergrowth of folklore that sprawls alongside, I wanted to let you know about Pilgrim, a wonderful series of BBC Radio 4 plays by Sebastian Baczkiewicz inspired by the folklore of the British Isles.

William Palmer is 900 years old—he was cursed by a fellow pilgrim on the road to Canterbury in 1185 for claiming that Christianity would wipe out the old beliefs. That pilgrim was the Lord of Faerie and William must forever walk between the worlds of the Greyfolk (them) and the Hotbloods (us). Pilgrim is a delightful—and frequently chilling—mix of tales old and new. The second series started today with The Drowned Church, and it's available to listen to online for the next seven days. There's also an interesting 'making of' blog post here. It's a series not to be missed!

Photo by Steve Bowbrick CC license: some rights reserved.

On Anti-Tales

2010-08-25T14:19:00.008+01:00

Robert Powell, Lance, 2008, watercolour etching

...most intellectual development depends upon new readings of old texts. I am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode...
—Angela Carter, 1983

My two favourite things about going to conferences are meeting fascinating people, and returning with a notebook stuffed with names and links and titles and doodles—all of things I desperately want to find out more about. The Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment Symposium was no exception. It always takes me a while to unpack when I've been away (over a week later my rucksack still has things in it) but I thought I'd unpack my notebook a little bit here, and share some of the things I got a tantalising taste of and want to follow up on.

Over the course of two days there were 23 papers, 2 plenaries, an artist's talk and 3 fiction readings given. Researchers came from a range of disciplines and from universities around the world. Happily many of the papers given will be collected together and published by Cambridge Scholars publishing in 2011. I can't possibly do justice to everything that went on, so I'm not going to attempt to. I do hope the following links may be of some use though...

(apologies that this is in no particular order, and messy, like my notebook)

Tales and books I now want to read:

After hearing about Nalo Hopkinson's reimagining of Bluebeard in a postcolonial setting 'The Glass Bottle Trick', in a paper by Natalie Robinson, I really want to get my hands on Hopkinson's collection Skin Folk.

One of my favourite papers was Dr Jessica Tiffin's exploration of the vampiric versions of Snow White by Neil Gaiman and Tanith Lee, and of the unusual interplay between the gothic and fairy tale elements in these tales. I now really want to read Tiffin's examination of narrative and metafiction in modern fairy tale Marvelous Geometry.

'A Suburban Fairy Tale' by Katherine Mansfield, covered in a paper by María Casado, is a brilliant tale I'd not come across before and really should have. It's available to read online here.

I was intrigued by humorist James Thurber's tales, covered in a paper by John P. Pazdziora. Thurber has been named as an influence by Neil Gaiman and I definitely want to read more.

Hearing about Rikki Ducornet's tales, in a paper by Dr Michelle Ryan-Sautour, was a revelation for me. Why had I never heard of Ducornet before?! I am now desperate to read her collections The One Marvelous Thing and The Complete Butcher's Tales. Hunting for info on her online I've come across this interview and this electronic chapbook (which features several of her tales and some of her artwork for the wonderful Borges story 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius'). Ducornet is also the illustrator for Kate Bernheimer's forthcoming collection of fairy tales Horse, Flower, Bird (another book I want!).

Some of the other writers covered (whose work I was already more familiar with) included A S Byatt, Roald Dahl, Sara Maitland, Margaret Atwood and, of course, Angela Carter.

Art and the anti-tale:
As well as literature we were treated to several papers on the anti-tale in the work of visual artists such as Dorothea Tanning (I have included her painting Birthday, to the right) and Paula Rego. The symposium also had a resident artist, Robert Powell (I've included an image by him at the top of this post). He is currently exhibiting his stunning work at the Henderson Gallery in Edinburgh.

In terms of film, a paper by Professor Suzanne Buchan on the Quay Brothers' Street of Crocodiles, followed by a screening of the film was a real treat. Buchan's paper also included what has to be my favourite quote from the symposium, taken from the Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin:

Children are fond of haunting any site where things are being visibly worked on. They are irresistibly drawn by the detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, carpentry, tailoring or whatever. In these waste products they recognize the face that the world of things turns directly and solely to them. In using these things they do not so much imitate the works of adults as bring together materials of widely differing kinds in a new volatile relationship. Children thus produce their own small world of things within the larger one. The fairy-tale [sic] is such a waste product—perhaps the most powerful to be found in the spiritual life of humanity: a waste product that emerges from the growth and decay of the saga. With the stuff of fairy-tales the child may be as sovereign and uninhibited as with rags and building blocks. Out of fairy-tale motifs the child constructs its world, or at least it forms a bond with these elements.

(I found the quote online, in a paper by Buchan on 'Animation Spectatorship: The Quay Brothers' "Animated Worlds"', in EnterText journal)

So what is an anti-tale?
I'm not a literary theorist, or fairy tale scholar, I research fairy tales for fun (and get a lot of inspiration from them for my own writing along the way). Whilst the term anti-tale was used and applied widely at the symposium I think everyone had their own particular idea of what it means. Retellings, reimagnings, subversions, new tales—all can come under the banner of anti-tale if they are employing motifs, or themes, or characters from the glorious ragbag of traditional tales in non-traditional ways.

What the symposium brought to light, for me, was the sheer abundance of anti-tales in literature and art. And although anti-tales can be identified as being contemporaneous with the oldest known fairy tales, within 20th and early 21st century literature they would seem to be the dominant of the two forms.

Anti-tales and fairy tales draw from the same well of material, but, perhaps, where a fairy tale dips a sturdy wooden bucket beneath the surface, the anti-tale is as likely to use a glass bucket, or a plastic sandcastle one, or a shoe. We are lucky to have such a diversity of tales to treasure.

Many thanks to symposium co-organiser Catriona McAra for sending the photo of me above, and to her and David Calvin for such a fantastic event in all respects!

Guest post: Matthew Finch on ZooNation's 'Into the Hoods'

2010-08-05T21:04:00.005+01:00

This summer, ZooNation’s Into the Hoods has returned to London at the Royal Festival Hall after an acclaimed 2008 season in the West End.

The ninety-minute urban dance show, which made its debut at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006, follows a boy and girl who, venturing out of their playground, become prisoners of the landlord of the Ruff Endz estate.

At the outset, a narrator speaks over animations of an illuminated manuscript book and a twinkling music-box refrain, giving the gloss of tradition, but the MC’s announcement, ‘This is theatre…but this is hip-hop theatre, so MAKE SOME NOISE!’ lets audiences know that they’re not exactly in for Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Andersen.

On the Ruff Endz estate, familiar figures from the world of fairytale are updated for the urban present. Spinderella is an aspiring DJ; ‘Prince’ is a Pop Idol reject, the estate’s ‘E-list’ celebrity; Wolf is a money-grabbing wannabe record mogul, while Lil Red dreams of singing stardom, and Jax of being a record producer, while the crimelord Giant does his deals from a penthouse at the top of the tower block.

The landlord makes a bargain with the lost children – he will give them money for bus tickets home if they fetch gifts for the 18th birthday of his daughter Rap-on-Zel: ‘An iPod white as milk, a hoodie as red as blood, weave as yellow as corn, and trainers as pure as gold.’

On their quest, the children interact with the iconic fairytale characters, who play out their stories in contemporary form – Wolf luring Lil Red into an exploitative record contract by impersonating her Grandma, Jax ascending to the Giant’s penthouse for a martial-arts faceoff, and Spinderella empowered to DJ at Prince’s ball, thanks to the gold shell-suited Fairy Gee, who dances to Destiny’s Child’s Independent Women.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in this witty, energetic show – from the spot-on musical choices (Spinderella’s theme is the plaintive ‘Roads’ by Portishead, that of the Ugly Sisters ‘U-G-L-Y’ by Daphne and Celeste) to the inspired choreography, including a couple of eye-popping perspective shifts which allow the Giant to fall ‘away’ from the audience and Rap-on-Zel’s hair to be climbed across stage to the theme from Mission: Impossible.

The whole show is ripe with modern references – the due date for Jax’s rent is counted down as an homage to ‘24’, and pensioners dance off with zimmer frames and wheelchairs in a parody of It’s Like That, while Rap-on-Zel’s room is decorated with posters of Eminem, Foxy Brown and Missy Elliott…and prison-style tally marks scratched on her wall.

For fairy tale lovers, however, the most exciting change to the traditional stories lies in their juxtaposition. What were, in traditional versions, quest narratives with single protagonists, become the linked struggles of a community on the estate. Friendships and allegiances complicate the idea of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ characters – ‘Prince’ is unreliable and egotistical, but he gets on with Jax; the girls show solidarity with one another and are all equally immune to reject Prince’s advances; when Jax is evicted and left homeless, it is Lil Red who is there for him (they share iPod earphones and even have a romantic moment beneath a ‘Match.com’ billboard).

The production is punchy, unsentimental about its urban setting, but also true to the tales from which it draws, and positive about the human spirit to the extent that every character gets their happy ending (including the Ugly Sisters, who become a girl group lip-synching to the Shoop Shoop Song).

Kate Prince’s show remains an inspired and vibrant tribute to the power of the fairy tale, loosely adapted from Sondheim’s Into the Woods but by now very much its own work. It’s on throughout the first half of August at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank, and well worth a visit for any lover of fairytales. You’ll find all the information you need for a visit at www.intothehoods.com

Matthew Finch blogs at booksadventures.blogspot.com

Quick Link: Top 10 transformations

2010-08-02T14:15:00.003+01:00

A lovely list of transformation stories, compiled for the Guardian by Ali Shaw (author of haunting transformation novel The Girl with Glass Feet).

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

2010-07-28T11:11:00.004+01:00

This is a story about a wonderful looking book that is coming out, and also about why Facebook sometimes makes me happy (I'm a late convert). I only found out about this forthcoming title—due out September 28th—because I saw a post from the Fairy Tale Review Facebook page, which in turn led me to the My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me Facebook page, as both journal and book are edited by tireless champion of fairy tales Kate Bernheimer.

The description of the book from the Penguin site says:

The fairy tale lives again in these forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction.

Neil Gaiman, Michael Cunningham, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, Lydia Millet, and more than thirty other extraordinary writers celebrate fairy tales in this thrilling volume-the ultimate literary costume party.

Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered from around the world by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen" and "The Little Match Girl" to Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" and "Cinderella" to the Brothers Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" and "Rumpelstiltskin" to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino.

Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.

The title of the book is a line from the Grimms' The Juniper Tree, which is reimagined in the book by Alissa Nutting. Make sure you 'Like' the book's Facebook page as they keep posting up tantalising little tidbits from the tales and links to some great interviews with contributors.

Other fairy tale related Facebook pages I'd recommend are the Cabinet des Fées one, the SurLaLune one and, of course, the New Fairy Tales one.

Teen writing contest

2010-07-28T10:00:00.005+01:00

There's still time to work on an entry for the Diamonds and Toads writing contest for teens, they are looking for retellings of Cinderella, and if you are aged between 13 and 18 you can send your entry to them during 'one magical day'—August the 15th. If you're not a teenager yourself please pass this on to any fairy tale loving teens you know. Full details of the competition are available here.

The illustration is by Jennie Harbour, and taken from My Favourite Book of Fairy Tales (1921)

Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment Symposium

2010-07-21T12:05:00.006+01:00

Registration is now open for this fascinating looking symposium being held at the University of Glasgow on the 12th-13th August. It is free to attend and the full programme is available online here. There is a great range of papers being given and panels with titles such as 'Wicked Women and Feminist Anti-texts', 'Not so, SnowWhite', 'Bluebeard', 'Surrealist Anti-tales', and 'Cinematic Reimaginings'.

John Patrick Pazdziora, whose wonderful fairy tale 'Ragabone' we published in Issue 5 of New Fairy Tales will be giving a paper entitled ‘ ‘‘You Know How Happy Kings Are”: The Anti-Fairytales of James Thurber’. And I am very excited to have been asked to give a reading of my fiction and to talk a little bit about New Fairy Tales. I'll be reading my anti-tale 'Raven', which was published online at Cabinet des Fées, and a new story 'Feather Girls' which is an anti-tale inspired by the swan maiden tale collected by Joseph Jacobs.

At the moment, the anti-tale is an under-researched concept, despite its being a popular form in terms of genre publishing. The symposium's organisers, Catriona McAra and David Calvin, have this to say about it:

The anti-fairy tale has long existed as a shadow of the traditional fairy tale genre. First categorized as the 'antimärchen' in Andre Jolles' seminal Einfache Formen (c.1930), the anti-tale was found to be contemporaneous with even the oldest known examples of fairy tale collections. Rarely an outward opposition to the traditional form itself, the anti-tale takes aspects of the fairy tale genre and re-imagines, subverts, inverts, deconstructs or satirizes elements of them to present an alternate narrative interpretation, outcome or morality. Red Riding Hood may elope with the wolf. Or Bluebeard's wife is not interested in his secret chamber. Snow White's stepmother gives her own account of events and Cinderella does not exactly find the prince charming.

The anti-fairy tale takes many forms. Some revisit and deconstruct familiar narratives (as above) or formulate new stories, characters and ever-afters, relying on and subverting familiar archetypes and plot devices. Following Jolles' seminal, respected text, the subgenre of the anti-tale has become dominant, as writers such as Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman and Phillip Pullman, artists such as Kiki Smith, Anna Gaskell and Kara Walker, and filmmakers such as Matthew Bright and Jane Campion have produced a diverse collage of anti-tales.
(read more here)

The organisers can be contacted with any enquiries at: antitales@googlemail.com. And I would really encourage anyone with an interest in fairy tales, who can get there, to come along and participate. It would be lovely to meet you (and for people who live too far away, I'll report back here after the event).

Profile: Bluebeard

2010-07-18T11:51:00.023+01:00

'Killing wives since 1697'

Name: Barbe Bleue or Bluebeard

Age: The oldest literary version of the story is by Charles Perrault and was published in 1697, but the tale was based on much older oral folktales.

Location: France. There has been much speculation over whether Perrault based Bluebeard on Gilles de Rais, a 15th c. Breton knight who fought alongside Joan of Arc and murdered children in his spare time. Blue-Beard a contribution to history and folk-lore is a book dedicated to the subject, although as the tale is closely related to many other folktales worldwide this link is often disputed.

Appearance: Did I mention he has a blue beard? He does in Perrault's version anyway, a beard which 'made him so frightfully ugly that all the women and girls ran away from him'. He's not to be confused with the pirate, whose beard was actually black.

Relationship Status: Interested in women. But would you want to marry him? Whether you take the tale to be about a psychopathic serial killer, or simply about the dangers of marriage in an age when death during childbirth was more common, he's not a good prospect. Especially if you add to that Perrault's view that the tale is really about the evils of women's curiosity (i.e. serves them right).

Best lines written about him: I couldn't write this profile without getting some Angela Carter in it, in her version of the tale, the title story in the collection The Bloody Chamber, her narrator says of him:

I know it must seem a curious analogy, a man with a flower, but sometimes he seemed to me like a lily. Yes. A lily. Possessed of that strange, ominous calm of a sentient vegetable, like one of those cobra-headed, funereal lilies whose white sheaths are curled out of a flesh as thick and tensely yielding to the touch as vellum. When I said that I would marry him, not one muscle in his face stirred, but he let out a long, extinguished sigh.

Some places you'll find him online:
Bluebeard and the Bloody Chamber, an essay by Terri Windling
An annotated version of the tale, along with history and illustrations on SurLaLune
Bluebeard stories collected by D. L. Ashliman
Bluebeard's Keys and Other Stories, by Anne Thackeray Ritchie
The Grey Woman, a reimagining of the Bluebeard story by Elizabeth Gaskell
Bluebeard's Final Girl, or, The Revisionist, a poem by Veronica Schanoes
The book for Offenbach's Opera of the tale
Bluebeard a 1944 film starring John Carradine (available to watch online)
Bluebeard; or Female Curiosity poster and info about a 1798 performance
Some other tales with murderous grooms: Fitcher's Bird, Mr Fox, The Robber Bridegroom, Cannetella

And if that's not enough Bluebeard for you, you could also try Catherine Breillat's new film. It got a cinema release in the UK on Friday but I've read that it has gone straight to DVD in the US.

There is an interview with Catherine Breillat in The Guardian and reviews of the film in The Guardian and The New York Times.

The illustration at the top of the post is taken from The Sleeping Beauty Picture Book, illustrated by Walter Crane. I love the fact that in this book 'Bluebeard' is published alongside 'The Baby's Own Alphabet', which says something about our changing relationship with the story and with our children.

Previous profiles: Goldilocks, Jack (of the beanstalk fame), Little Red Riding Hood, The Big Bad Wolf

When I went to play at the Manchester Children's Book Festival...

2010-07-13T20:04:00.011+01:00

(click on the image to see a larger version)

... I had an amazing time. I ran three family fairy tale workshops, in which everyone, from toddlers to adults, had fun dressing up, drawing and creating new fairy tales together. The picture above was drawn by festival illustrator Dai Owen, who came in and magically captured four of the participants in just a couple of minutes (they were busy trying to work out which key would unlock the bird cage in the golden castle, at the top of the glass mountain—they decided a feather key would do it in the end).

I owe a lot of thank yous; to the festival organisers for such a lovely day, to friends Carys Bray and Elaine Wilson, who did a fantastic job running the New Fairy Tales stall, giving away postcards, badges and selling some handmade chapbooks of our stories to raise money for Derian House Children's Hospice. And, to various members of my family (Mum, Dad, Aunty T & Grandma), who were dragged into making everything from crowns and keys to capes and banners! And thank you to Dai for allowing me to share his wonderful drawing.

The festival website is still online, so if you missed it you can still have a nosey at what went on, and the good news is the festival will return in 2012.

A competition

2010-06-26T14:04:00.015+01:00

I've really deliberated over whether to post about this or not. In the end I decided I wasn't comfortable posting about it directly, but I didn't feel happy about not flagging up the opportunity for anyone who might be interested. A UK television and broadband provider (who are part of a multinational media empire) are running a competition looking for tweet length new endings to fairy tales. There are full details posted on the SurLaLune blog here.

The illustration is by the wonderful John Bauer (1882-1918) from the tale 'The Boy and the Trolls, or the Adventure' which is included in Swedish Folk Tales, a book I really treasure (and far be it from me to use my illustration choice to suggest Mr Murdoch is a money grabbing troll, and that one of his companies is simultaneously trying to bag themselves plenty of free advertising via social networking platforms and to associate the use of their services with a 'happily ever after').

Some lesser known Grimms' tales

2010-06-23T21:30:00.007+01:00

The Old Woman in the Woods by Adam Oehlers

I have several collections of the Grimms' tales, but I've had my favourite since I was seven. It's a big chunky book called The Illustrated Treasury of the Brothers Grimm, illustrated by Luděk Maňásek, with translations by Vladimir Varecha.

The illustrations are peculiar but vivid, the translations are written in a bright, simple style and the publisher is (rather fittingly) called Treasure Press. But, for me, the best thing about this book is how many tales it has in it: 87. Which is still only a portion of the 210 tales included in the Grimms' final (1857) edition of Children's and Household Tales, but it's more than are in the other collections I own. It's a book I can still get lost in.

I often wonder what makes editors choose a small number of the Grimms' tales to publish over and over again, particularly when it comes to illustrated texts and picture books. Perhaps it's because they think readers only want to revisit tales they are familiar with, but there are many other wonderful tales hidden away that I'm sure would become just as popular if they were given the chance.

I think my favourite is The Old Woman in the Wood. It's a strange name for a story in which the said old woman plays only a small (but villainous) part. The tale is really about a girl who finds herself lost in a forest. She is visited by a bird who brings her keys so she can unlock the trees... (I'm not going to say any more because I want to encourage you to follow the link and read it in full).

Some other tales I've long loved but haven't found elsewhere as often as I would have liked are: The Glass Coffin—which features a tiny castle and a princess trapped in glass chests (although AS Byatt has retold this and you can find her fantastic version in both Possession and in The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye); Jorinde and Joringel—which is a beautiful bird transformation tale; and The Seven Ravens—another bird transformation tale, which features a sister setting out to rescue her brothers from inside a glass mountain.

I have been reading from The Illustrated Treasury of the Brothers Grimm since I was seven and I can't see myself ever tiring of it. In Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales, Max Lüthi has this to say about the appeal of fairy tales for adults, as well as children:

The fairy tale portrays, in a wider sense than is generally realized, a harmonious world. The confidence from which it flows is transmitted to both those who tell it and those who hear it. Thus, it is no wonder that not only children come under its spell, but that it repeatedly exerts its charm over adults. It gives not only pleasure, it gives form and inspiration; and we can readily believe the report of a north German storyteller that a soothing and healing power can emanate from fairy tales when told to sick people in hospitals. Every fairy tale is, in its own way, something of a dragon slayer.

The beautiful illustration at the head of this post is by Adam Oehlers, whose story 'Dear Little Emmie' features in the latest issue of New Fairy Tales. Adam is extending the story at the moment and it will be published as a book in early 2011.

The tales I have linked to above are from Margaret Hunt's 1884 translation. All 210 tales from this translation are available on the SurLaLune site.

There's a new issue of Enchanted Conversation online...

2010-06-19T15:33:00.003+01:00

...and it features short stories, poetry and essays inspired by 'The Little Mermaid' and other mermaid, nixy and sea witch tales. I can't wait to settle down to read it!

There are also two contests you can enter, one which asks writers to explore what it would feel like to be a "Daughter of the Air" (as in Andersen's original tale) in a poem or story, and another asking readers to suggest a menu for a mermaid-related meal for the journal's Fairy Tale Food Editor (with a note from Kate Wolford, the Editor, to say they do not mean some type of hideous mer-cannibalism!).

I have a poem called The Blackpool Mermaid in this issue and I should probably explain for readers outside the UK that Blackpool isn't, as its name might suggest, a dark, enchanted pool but a famous Lancashire seaside town (not too far from where I live). Once incredibly popular with holidaymakers, it's been in decline since the mid 20th century but it still has some charms.

As with previous issues of this journal, readers are warmly encouraged to join in and comment. You can enter the Enchanted Conversation here.

New Fairy Tales: Issue 5

2010-05-31T20:34:00.005+01:00

The trailer...

and the issue itself...

We hope you enjoy it!

Visit the website if you'd like to download the PDF version or find out more about New Fairy Tales. And please help us to spread the word about this issue; share the YouTube trailer with friends or 'Like' us on Facebook. Thank you :-)

Manchester Children's Book Festival

2010-05-25T11:48:00.004+01:00

I'm very excited about this! Here's the introduction to the forthcoming Manchester Children's Book Festival by Poet Laureate, Festival Director (and fine fairy tale writer) Carol Ann Duffy:

The 2010 Manchester Children’s Book Festival is the first festival of its kind to run in the North West of England. We’re thrilled to present a four-day programme of events and activities featuring some of today’s favourite children’s writers, illustrators, books and characters.

Aimed at everyone who has ever loved children’s books, our exciting series of events will run at Manchester Metropolitan University’s city centre campus as well as in a variety of schools, libraries and other venues across the region.

No matter if you can’t make it to Manchester – you’ll still be able to take part in our competitions and in our international Festival Readathon. Wherever you are in the world, I hope you can join us.

Carol Ann Duffy

There are far too many wonderful events taking place for me to list here, the full programme is available online. Highlights for me include: Carol Ann Duffy and John Sampsons' performance of The Princess' Blankets (the space will be decorated by Catherine Hyde's beautiful illustrations so that 'you'll feel you're stepping into the book'); the screening of Jeannette Winterson's Ingenious, introduced by the writer; wonderful pop-up book workshops; Michael Rosen leading a Bear Hunt!; a lecture on the World of Edward Gorey; an A-Z of Children's Books exhibition; Adele Geras and Mary Hoffman discussing their imaginative historical fiction; and a chance to meet three of the authors behind the latest series of Doctor Who novels (Daleks and Cybermen will be patrolling the building!). Phew.

Faye Durston and myself will be taking part in the Family Festival Fun Day on the Saturday. We'll have a New Fairy Tales stall and be running Family Fairy Tale workshops which will involve dressing up, drawing and lots of fun!

If you're too far away to make it to the festival there is still the international readathon you can take part in (and I'm planning a special fairy tale read as part of that which I'll blog about soon). If you think you might make the trip, and you're not familiar with Manchester, Creative Tourist is a great online guide to the city.

Hope to see you there!

Scheherezade’s Bequest

2010-05-20T20:15:00.011+01:00

Issue 10 of Scheherezade’s Bequest is now online at the Cabinet Des Fées website. It's one of my favourite journals and I can't wait to settle down this evening to read it. I am also incredibly excited because I have a story in this issue.

It's a contemporary tale inspired by the opening lines of the Grimms' tale The Raven, in which a mother wishes her fractious baby daughter would become a raven and fly away so that she could get some peace; the girl promptly does. I wanted to see what would happen if the raven couldn't fly away. (In the original tale 'she flew into a dark wood and stayed there a long time, and her parents knew nothing of her'. The tale then follows the adventures of the man who must release the raven girl from the bewitchment.)

Ravens appear frequently in myth, fairy tales and folklore, joining a host of other birds (there's a wonderful article on bird lore by Terri Windling here). I have always been fascinated by tales in which people are transformed into birds. I suppose it's because of the sense of freedom I imagine in flight, although in fairy tales being transformed into a bird is as often an ordeal as it is the form someone chooses.

One thing I was intrigued to find out when I was researching real (as opposed to literary) ravens is that they are playful birds and one of the few species who make their own toys. There's lots more raven info on Wikipedia and you can also hear a raven here (as recorded by naturesongs.com).

The Beastly Bride

2010-05-16T13:55:00.009+01:00

The Beastly Bride: Tales of the Animal People is the fourth anthology in Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow's Mythic Fiction Series. The anthology contains tales and poems of animal-human transformation by writers including Gregory Frost, Jeanine Hall Gailey, Ellen Kushner, Tanith Lee, Delia Sherman and Jane Yolen. You can read the preface to the anthology here.

My copy hasn't arrived yet but I wanted to post about the book now because this week Charles Tan has been interviewing the writers who have contributed to the anthology for SF Signal and Terri Windling has been collecting the links to those interviews here. It's fascinating to be able to read about the creative process the writers went though, and to find out about their inspirations and thoughts on the Beastly Bride concept.

Midori Snyder has also collected together links to the interviews so far and links to a lovely selection of essays in the Journal of Mythic Arts Archives which relate to the subject. Shape Shifters: Art Inspired by Animal-Human Transformation Myths is another treasure from the JoMA site not to be missed and I'd also recommend Marina Warner's essay on animals in fairy tales. And if all that hasn't whetted your appetite enough there are also some reviews up here and here.

Also on Terri Windling's blog this week people from all over the world have been sending in the view from their window. A lot of the people work with fairy tales or in other realms of fantasy and art and it's wonderful to see so many distinctive views (I did send mine in and yes it is a bit grim looking compared to all the rural idylls but I like it anyway!).

The beautiful swan maiden painting in this post is by Romina Perez. You can see more of her work on her blog and website. (The image is used with permission). And if you'd like to find out more about swan maidens there's a wonderful selection of their tales here.

Quick Link: Germaine Greer on Old Wives' Tales

2010-05-15T15:28:00.005+01:00

'There are thousands of learned discussions of fairy tales but very few that approach them from the old wives' perspective, with the result that the obvious goes unnoticed.'

So says Germain Greer in a fascinating and insightful article in today's Guardian which explores the tradition of tale telling by women. Well worth a read!

Guest post: Matthew Finch on Playbox Theatre's 'The Bloody Chamber'

2010-05-11T19:49:00.011+01:00

Going in for the kill: Playbox Electric Carousel’s
The Bloody Chamber

Cox’s Yard in Stratford-upon-Avon was the venue for last month’s stage adaptation of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, devised and performed by members of youth theatre company Playbox.

As the audience arrived, the stairs to the riverside performance space were strewn with pages torn from women’s magazines, blurring the transition from everyday life to a darker fairytale world. On stage, girls in heavy 1980’s make-up, with back-combed hair and red sashes, hands clutched to hearts, stood frozen by the sound of a high pitched alarm.

In the opening dance, a suited man – the malevolent husband of the protagonist – moved among the girls, posing them, dancing with them, tearing out their hearts in his search for the perfect woman. The show, which centres on Carter’s version of the Bluebeard myth, follows a newlywed’s discovery that her husband has murdered his previous wives in the chamber of the title.

As director Alice Trew explains, her take on Carter strips the 1979 story collection ‘down to the bare bones, giving the essence of a harsh and violent tale’. Trew’s magpie approach steals scenes from across Carter’s writing, but violence, control and desire are always at the fore of this potent staging. With virtually no dialogue in the show, Carter’s sensuous language is invoked by melodramatic choreography – most effectively in the sequence where the husband uses mirrors to multiply his wife into a ‘harem’.

One effect of the wordless, iconic approach is to remove the context of the Bluebeard story, which Carter set in post-revolutionary France. Place names are erased, and a red ribbon tied around the bride’s neck still stands for decapitation, but no longer relates to the ironic neckwear which aristocrats wore if they had escaped the Terror.

For Trew, this stripping out of detail universalizes the issue of women’s suffering under patriarchy, across nations and throughout history. In the story’s resolution, which is greatly changed, women’s capacity to jointly resist oppression is emphasised. Where Carter has the bride’s mother ride to the rescue toting a handgun, the husband here dies at the hands of the girls whose hearts he stole in the opening dance, with the mother delivering the coup de grace.

The original’s happily-ever-after conclusion is replaced by an extended sequence derived from Carter’s vampiric Lady of the House of Love. The widowed bride blinds herself with the key to her husband’s chamber and attacks the women’s magazines that litter the stage with their incessant bombardment of words and images. She feasts on stolen hearts…before turning on her new lover to quote her husband’s ominous words: ‘This is the key that leads to the kingdom of the unimaginable.’

All of this could seem like a blunt, though necessary and laudable, retread of 70’s and 80’s feminist polemic – The Beauty Myth For Beginners by a youth theatre company. In fact, the Playbox production offers something more complex. The opening sequence, set to the pastiche electro of La Roux, creates a kind of historical commentary on the 80’s – a decade of blood and opulence – from a company of players not born in the decade. As the music leads us through to the present day, the protagonist’s journey becomes also a journey from the feminism of the 70’s to women’s contemporary struggles, as charted by these young performers.

The show as a whole, with its fairytale atmosphere and uncompromising gender politics, is an invocation of fables in a 21st century that, from Twilight to Doctor Who and The Fairy Tale Cupboard itself, has returned to the fairy tale to make sense of the world around us. In this world, Trew suggests, ‘Women have forsaken trying to be angels and instead focus on simply not becoming monsters’.

Matthew Finch blogs at booksadventures.blogspot.com
Photographs by James Blay

Once upon a time...

2010-05-09T11:16:00.026+01:00

I was going to try and write a short fairy tale as some kind of justification for including this post on what is essentially a topic blog. But fairy tales don’t deal in democracy. In the UK it doesn't always feel like we do either.

During my lifetime the UK has been failed, first by a Tory government, then by Blair and Browns’ false Labour. Our politicians have helped instigate an illegal war and facilitated economic disaster.

Our parliament is full of wolves. In Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding Hood the wolf eats the girl, she doesn't escape; in the Grimms’ version she must be rescued by the Huntsman. I prefer the version where she sorts things out for herself.

We don’t know what the ending of the current election tale will be but I’m one of the many people who feels, as not all votes count, we haven’t been given a chance to sort things out for ourselves. If you’re a British citizen consider signing this petition for electoral reform and joining the forthcoming demonstrations. In life there can’t be a happily ever after but there must be better than this.

Some additional links:
The BBC's Q&A: Calls to change the UK election voting system
The Electoral Reform Society
Fair votes now!, Comment at The Guardian
Kay Burley bullies a protester - an example of what passes for journalism in the Murdoch empire
Chris Riddell's 'fairy in search of electoral reform'

The image in this post is from ruSSeLL hiGG's Flickr stream and is under a CC license, it was photographed in East London the day after the election.

Call for submissions - Enchanted Conversation

2010-05-04T16:55:00.004+01:00

Enchanted Conversation, is an online fairy tale magazine in Blogger format. They are currently publishing four issues a year, each takes the theme of a traditional tale as its starting point. Submissions are now open for 'The Little Mermaid' issue. They are also happy to look at submissions inspired by other watery tales such as Undine and The Nixy. The deadline is the 15th May and full submission guidelines are available here.

Also not to be missed are the two contests they're running alongside their current 'Beauty and the Beast' issue. One is a writing contest, and for the other you need only join in the conversation and comment on a piece in the issue to be entered.

Illustration by Edmund Dulac, taken from Stories from Hans Andersen (1911) on the Internet Archive.

A feast of fairy tales...

2010-04-12T13:45:00.015+01:00

There are so many delicious looking fairy tale treats to feast on this week. The new issue of Goblin Fruit, the fantastical poetry zine, is up. And to celebrate their fourth birthday they're giving away lovely icons, like the one to the left, for you to peruse and use (the icons have been created by Deborah J. Brannon, using Oliver Hunter's gorgeous artwork).

The second issue of Enchanted Conversation has also gone live. It's dedicated to Beauty and the Beast and is packed with retellings, reimaginings and reviews of the tale. I can't wait to dig in!

And, if you're still not full up from all that fairy tale goodness, tomorrow night Heston's Fairytale Feast will air on Channel 4 at 9pm. The pudding sounds good: 'the guests make their way through a wooded glade to find a Hansel and Gretel house made entirely of sweets'. But I'm not so sure about some of the other recipes, which, according to the Radio Times, include 'Snow White-style apples, made from blown sugar piped full of boar mousse' and 'chicken testicles done in the style of jelly beans (with a squid-ink coating).'

Hmmm I think I'll stick to reading the tales...

Addition to post: Here's the programme on YouTube if you didn't catch it. Thanks to redridingtweets for the link.

The instructions you'll need...

2010-04-09T10:17:00.009+01:00

... if you ever find yourself in a fairy tale:

The book trailer for Neil Gaiman's forthcoming Instructions, beautifully illustrated by Charles Vess (the direct YouTube link is here).

You can also read the text for the poem in the JoMA archives.

Too grim for the Grimms...

2010-03-31T19:54:00.004+01:00

This is a short film by the wonderful Mucky Puppets based on the tale the Grimms removed from Children's and Household Tales after the first (1812) edition.

I love the film's atmospheric silhouette puppetry, and I'm intrigued by its treatment of this very dark story (the tale can be read online here, along with a commentary by Donald Haase on using it in his teaching here).

Watching the film I couldn't help thinking of this article I read in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. There's no shying away from the fact that this is a very upsetting subject, but then fairy tales often touch upon subjects that we'd prefer to pretend didn't exist: murder, child abuse, rape, forced marriage, incest, cannibalism, bestiality. In their simple prose, and with their refusal to engage in explicit sensationalism, they have, perhaps, always offered us a way of discussing these subjects. But from the Grimms to the present day there has been a dominant move towards the sanitisation of fairy tales for children. I can understand the desire to protect children but this leaves us with a problem—we can edit our collections of stories, but can we can't edit the world.

Thanks to Richard Mansfield for giving me permission to post the film here.

Call for papers - Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment

2010-03-30T20:09:00.003+01:00

(this is an edited version of the call for papers, the full version is now available online here)

“…most intellectual development depends upon new readings of old texts. I am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode…” - Angela Carter

An interdisciplinary research forum and subsequent publication of proceedings (Cambridge Scholars Publishing) based around the currently under-researched notion of the 'anti-tale' to be held at the University of Glasgow, Thursday 12th - Friday 13th August 2010. Our confirmed plenary speaker is Dr. Anna Kérchy (Senior Assistant Professor, University of Szeged), and our resident artists will include Robert Powell (Edinburgh College of Art).

The anti-fairy tale has long existed as a shadow of the traditional fairy tale genre. First categorized as the 'antimärchen' in Andre Jolles' seminal Einfache Formen (c.1930), the anti-tale was found to be contemporaneous with even the oldest known examples of fairy tale collections. Rarely an outward opposition to the traditional form itself, the anti-tale takes aspects of the fairy tale genre and re-imagines, subverts, inverts, deconstructs or satirizes elements of them to present an alternate narrative interpretation, outcome or morality. Red Riding Hood may elope with the wolf. Or Bluebeard's wife is not interested in his secret chamber. Snow White's stepmother gives her own account of events and Cinderella does not exactly find the prince charming. The anti-fairy tale takes many forms. Some revisit and deconstruct familiar narratives (as above) or formulate new stories, characters and ever-afters, relying on and subverting familiar archetypes and plot devices.

This project is interdisciplinary in its scope, and our call goes out to a diverse range of disciplines including, but not limited to, scholars and students from: Literature, History of Art, Media/ Film Studies, Psychology, Creative Writing, Music. Our call for new research on 'anti-tales' is intended to provoke creative, imaginative responses, though we are particularly interested in contributions on the following topics:

Once upon a time…
…happily ever after?
The use of the anti-tale and disenchantment in children's and/or adult's literature
Rewritings/ re-readings of the fairy tale
Narrative voice in anti-tales; authorship and authority
Dialogues between the creative and the critical
Morality versus immorality
Feminist interpretations
Decolonizing the fairy tale; culture versus anti-culture?
Context and politics
New perspectives: new writers, new illustrators
Pedagogy (lessons unlearnt)
After 'ever after'?

Please email abstracts of 300 words (max.) for 20 minute papers and C.V. to David Calvin (University of Ulster) and Catriona McAra (University of Glasgow): antitales@googlemail.com by 30th April 2010.

Islands that are really giants, and the root child from under a tree

2010-03-27T14:26:00.012Z

I just wanted to link to this gallery of images selected from the work of Kitty Crowther, the Belgian writer and illustrator who won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize this week. The jury said that 'In her world, the door between imagination and reality is wide open. She addresses the reader gently and personally, but with profound effect. In her deeply felt empathy with people in difficulty, she shows ways in which weakness can be turned into strength. '

Judging by these few images there is a definite feel of the fairy tale to her work, which includes 2009 picture book Annie du Lac, which tells the story of Annie and three islands in a lake that turn out to be giants, and L´enfant racine (2003), which tells the story of Leslie who lives alone in a forest and meets a root child. I'd love to get my hands on these books!

The images in the post are book covers taken from here.

Forthcoming events

2010-03-23T14:12:00.009Z

A couple of fantastic looking events are coming up which I'm too far away to get to, but I wanted to highlight them in case any of you are nearby:

The first is the premiere of Peerifool, a fairy tale film made by the Chagford Filmaking Group (I've written about their brilliant work bringing British fairy tales to the big screen before here). The premiere takes place on Sunday 28th March at Exeter Picturehouse at 12noon and you can buy tickets online.

The tale of Peerifool is available to read online here.

The second is a Marina Warner lecture 'Dark Arts: Magic and Strangers after The Arabian Nights' at Queen Mary University of London on Tuesday 30th March:

'Enchanters in The Arabian Nights are frequently outsiders, infidels who worship fire and command djinns who disobeyed God; in many of the tales, the magicians come from Persia or Africa, or some other elsewhere depicted as faraway and exotic. Marina Warner will explore how these representations combined with a European desire to distance western culture from its tradition of magical thinking, and - in the writings of Voltaire and William Beckford, for example - offered fertile proxies for conveying the enduring fascination - and uses - of enchantment.'

This is Warner's second public lecture as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University. The podcast of her first 'Figures in the Carpet: Magic and the 1001 Nights' is available here.

Competition for unpublished fairy tales:

2010-03-10T11:52:00.005Z

The following details are taken from the website for the award and their press release (note that on the website in quite a few places it talks about 'inedited' fairy tales, but I think this is a mistranslation of unpublished, there are also two different closing dates mentioned–the 15th and the 25th–it's probably best to go for the earlier one!)

The Hans Christian Andersen Fairy-tale Award, devoted to children’s literature and unpublished fables, has been taking place in Sestri Levante since 1967. It is an important and prestigious price recognized both in Italy and at international level. In the past editions, the Andersen Award has involved as main characters and jurors, renowned names such as Italo Calvino, Alberto Moravia, Sergio Zavoli, Peppino De Filippo, Mario Soldati and Emanuele Luzzati.

The Award is dedicated to unpublished fables which are divided into four categories differentiated by the authors’ age. These are: Nursery School (between 3 and 5 year old, in groups), children (6 to 10 year old), teenagers (between 11 and 16 year old) and adults (over 16 year old). The Award is also open to foreign authors who can write fairytales in English, French, German and Spanish.

Fairytales can be sent online through the website: www.andersenpremio.it. The rules state that foreign authors can participate in the Andersen Award with an unpublished fable, no longer than three pages, to be sent, no later than March 15 th, 2010.

The winners will be announced at the Andersen Festival (27th to the 30th of May 2010) which will take place in Sestri Levante, a place which Andersen visited and said this about:

“What a fairy-tale evening did I spend in Sestri Levante! The inn was very close to the sea, and a strong undertow lapped against it; clouds in the sky were crimson red and the mountains were sparkling in the brightest colours. The trees themselves were like gigantic fruit baskets, full of rich bunches of grapes.” 1883

The town's Baia delle Favole (Bay of Fables) is named in honour of Andersen.

Down rabbit holes...

2010-03-02T11:54:00.015Z

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is not really a fairy tale, but, like Peter Pan and the Oz books, it is often considered to be one of what L. Frank Baum called the 'newer "wonder tales". But before I get properly started I have a confession to make. Alice is not one of my favourite tales, in fact far from it, but as there's no escaping Alice this week I wanted to collect together some of the many great Alice links I've come across.

My problem with Alice is the ending. Reading a beautiful pop-up version with my sons over the last few days I've been reminded just how much I loved the stories as a child—until I got to the end. And Lewis Caroll does it to us not once but twice. In both stories we reach the dreaded waking. Why create such a wonderful reality only to destroy it with 'Wake up, Alice dear!' .... 'Why, what a long sleep you've had!'

No! Of course as an adult re-reading the books I can see all the metaphors and symbols. I can admit that we are told Alice is feeling very 'sleepy and stupid' and falling down the rabbit hole could be a metaphor for falling asleep... but the details: the sides of the well 'filled with cupboards and bookshelves...maps and pictures hung upon pegs'. As a child I read the story literally and I still want this to be an actual doorway into another world. Just as the back of the wardrobe was in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. These magical doorways were the most exciting thing to me about stories when I first began reading. There was the picture of the Dawntreader too, and when I was seven I had a teacher called Miss Jackson who told us wonderful tales of the Tockholes Treacle Miners. Tockholes was a village near where we lived and the doorways into the miners' underground world were to be found in the landscape all around us (and I've looked out for them ever since). In Through the Looking-Glass there is another magical entrance: the glass 'was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist' so that Alice could step through.

I just wish Caroll had provided a satisfying exit route from Wonderland too, rather than cheating us with it all having been a dream. But despite this, I await the Tim Burton film, which reimagines the Alice stories, with glee. And in the meantime I'm enjoying revisiting Alice with my sons—the eldest keeps standing on the book, trying to get down the rabbit hole...

Digitised manuscripts and illustrations:
Alice's Adventures Under Ground—the original manuscript as written and illustrated by Caroll, on the British Library site
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1866), as illustrated by John Tenniel
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1907), as illustrated by Arthur Rackham
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice Found There (1911)
Salvador Dali's illustrations (1969)
Illustrators of Alice on the web

Early films (available to watch online):
Alice in Wonderland (1903) silent film by Cecil Hepworth
Alice in Wonderland (1915) silent film by W.W.Young

Interviews:
Tim Burton interview on Radio 4—a brilliant interview, thanks to Faye for the link.
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross—a slightly more awkward interview, and as much as I love Johnny Depp I wish Ross had paid more attention to Tim Burton.
Interview with Mia Wasikowska, the new Alice, in The Times

Articles:
There's something about Alice, AS Byatt in The Guardian—an engaging article which takes in a lot of other British children's classics but says less than I would have expected about Alice.
Innocence, obsession and the making of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Ackroyd in The Times—an interesting article about the history of the story and Dodgson himself.

Additional interesting links:
A-Z of Alice in Wonderland — eclectic list of all things Alice from The Independent.
Info about Alice in Sunderland — a fantastic looking Graphic Novel, thanks to Andy Hedgecock for the recommendation.

Illustration by Arthur Rackham 'At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her' P158

New additions and call for submissions

2010-02-23T20:16:00.008Z

Firstly, I want to welcome the newly expanded New Fairy Tales team:

Associate Editor for Fiction: Andy Hedgecock
Associate Editor for Poetry: Anna McKerrow
Art Director: Faye Durston

Andy, a freelance writer and researcher, is also the Co-Fiction Editor for leading UK science fiction and fantasy magazine Interzone. Anna is a poet, whose first collection The Fast Heat of Beauty came out in 2008. She's also recently been working on a writing project called Bookbite. Faye is a writer and children's illustrator whose first book is due out from Macmillan in September. She has also done some lovely work for the magazine before (the illustration above is one of hers as is my blog banner).

I'm incredibly excited about working with them all, and we're now looking for some fantastic new fairy tales for Issue 5.

The call for submissions is below:

New Fairy Tales call for submissions
www.newfairytales.co.uk

We are currently seeking submissions for our fifth issue. We are looking for new fairy tales in short story format (max 3000 words), and in other formats such as poetry, flash fiction and comic strip.

We welcome works inspired by a love of traditional tales but we are not looking for retellings or reimaginings of existing tales. Show us what you think a new fairy tale can be.

For full submission guidelines please visit our website: www.newfairytales.co.uk/pages/submissions.html

All submissions should be sent to the editors at newfairytales@googlemail.com

The deadline for submissions to our fifth issue is 20th April 2010.

10 rules

2010-02-20T13:35:00.005Z

Not strictly fairy tale related, but today's Guardian contains 10 rules for writing fiction by lots of great writers. I wanted to link to it here on the basis that a. some of you may write and so find this interesting, and b. some of the writers who've contributed have done wonderful things with fairy tales.

Here's a little taste of the rules by the fairy tale writers:

Margaret Atwood: 'Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.'

Neil Gaiman: 'The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.'

Jeanette Winterson: 'Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.'

and I had to end on Philip Pullman who contributed this: 'My main rule is to say no to things like this, which tempt me away from my proper work.'

There are lots of other fantastic writers featured too (including Michael Morpurgo, Michael Moorcock, Annie Proulx, Hilary Mantel—I could go on) so it's well worth a read. The article is available online in two parts:
Part 1
Part 2

Undine and Ondine

2010-02-17T09:58:00.008Z

In The Fantastic Imagination, George Macdonald, one of my favourite fairy tale writers, said:

'Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.'

Undine is one of the inspirations behind Neil Jordan's forthcoming film Ondine. Gypsy, at Once Upon a Blog, wrote a great post about the film last week, but I'm so excited about it I wanted to share the trailer here too:

Also, there is a beautiful digitised copy of Undine, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, available to read online here.

Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy

2010-02-10T10:21:00.006Z

(I've just found out about this and had to post something straight away!) The Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy is a new and incredibly exciting project which intends to 'focus on the importance of fairy tales as a creative force both in literature and culture.'

Here's some information from their website:

The Centre will provide a forum where writers and scholars from various disciplines can discuss folk narratives, fairy tales and fantasy works, both as independent ‘genres’ (the literary fantastic, for example, may not always have obvious folk- or fairy-tale motifs), and also in terms of the resonances and dissonances between them, and other cultural forms.

Although the scope of the project is geographically and culturally inclusive, the founding impulse for the Centre is related to the specific locale of Sussex and its surrounding region. This area is rich in examples of all three kinds of narrative, ranging from folk narratives of various kinds, through literary fairy tales written in, as well as about, Sussex (for example, by George MacDonald and Eleanor Farjeon), to major works of fantasy and myth by Sussex residents such as MacDonald (Phantastes), David Lindsay (A Voyage to Arcturus), Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast) and Neil Gaiman (Stardust).

While the project is situated in Sussex, its planned scope is not only national but also international, bringing together writers and scholars, as well as publishing and curating scholarly resources, from around the globe.

The centre is being directed by Bill Gray, Professor of Literary History and Hermeneutics at the University of Chichester, and the advisory board includes a fantastic number of the most important fairy tale scholars working in the world today (including Cristina Bacchilega, Marina Warner, and Jack Zipes).

The project is going to create an online, multilingual, multi-authored, annotated bibliographic index consisting of links to primary sources of folktales, fairy tales and fantasy works available in the public domain, as well as to secondary sources for scholarly discussion on these subjects.

There will also be events, including a symposium to mark the centenary of author and illustrator Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) in 2011, and an international conference on ‘Folklore, Fairy Tales and the Fantastic Imagination’ in 2012, to celebrate the bicentenary of the publication of the Grimm Brothers’ Children’s and Household Tales.

Planned publications include an online newsletter and journal, and there is a Folktales mailing list, which is going to be used to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion of folktales, fairy tales and fantasy literature. Contributions can include research enquiries as well information about relevant publications and events.

So although the centre is physically based in Sussex it will bring benefits to fairy tale lovers worldwide. Make sure you visit their site to find out more.

Profile: The Big Bad Wolf

2010-02-05T17:12:00.016Z

Name: In the old tales he is most often referred to simply as 'the wolf'. It was during the recording of Disney's famous 1933 song (which you can listen to further down) that he acquired the 'Big Bad'. He was originally going to be called 'The Big Old Wolf' but reportedly Walt decided 'The Big Bad Wolf' scanned better.

Age: Impossible to figure out—but here's what we do know: Fenir, one of the first bad wolves, can be found in Norse mythology (he's mentioned in the Poetic Edda which was compiled from oral sources in the 13th century). The wolf and werewolf are thought to have been popular figures in oral folk tales for centuries—The Grandmother, which was collected in 1870, is representative of this tradition. The wolf, as we are perhaps most familiar with him, appears in three distinct fairy tales in the European literary tradition:

Little Red Riding Hood: the first literary version, by Charles Perrault, was published in 1697. In this version the wolf gets exactly what he wants and we're warned of wolves 'who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the street' (or as Grandmother so succinctly puts it in the film The Company of Wolves 'The worst kind of wolf is hairy on the inside'). The Grimms included their version of the tale, Little Red Cap, in every edition of their Children's and Household Tales; you can read the 1812 version, or the final 1857 version online. It was the Grimms who introduced the woodsman and the nasty ending for the wolf.

The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids: first published by the Grimms in Children's and Household Tales in 1812, the tale includes a very similar fate for the wolf.

The Story of the Three Little Pigs: first collected by James Orchard Haliwell in The Nursery Rhymes of England in its first edition of 1842. This was the source for Joseph Jacob's more famous 1890 version.

Location: Wolf and werewolf tales were common throughout Europe, particularly in France, but not so much here in Britain where unfortunately we'd managed to exterminate wolves by the 17th century—we have lots of Last Wolf tales instead.

Relationship Status: You might think a wolf who went round either scoffing small pigs, baby goats, or young girls and/or their Grandmothers might find it hard to get a date—but that's not always the case—whether it's Red herself that takes a fancy to him, as in Angela Carter's 'The Company of Wolves' (from The Bloody Chamber) and Carol Ann Duffy's 'Little Red-Cap' (from The World's Wife); or Grandma, as in the original ending to Tex Avery's 1943 cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood (which was cut because it was thought to be too close to bestiality), and in this 1931 cartoon:

taken from the Internet Archive

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

taken from the Internet Archive
As we've already seen not everybody, and although the wolf in the older tales is always bad there are a lot of reformed versions out there, from Bigby (sherrif, and son of the North Wind—from whom he inherited his Huff 'n Puff) in the unbelievably good Fables series; to the cross-dressing, rather lazy wolf in the Shrek films.

Some other places you'll find him lurking online:

An 1866 verse version of Little Red Riding Hood by Tom Hood, which includes the illustrations by Gustave Doré.

Little Red Riding Hood—A 1921 version with lovely illustrations by Jennie Harbour.

Roald Dahl's wonderful Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf

An illustrated copy of The Story of the Three Little Pigs, from 1904.

A Wolf's Lament, by M. Lynn Johnson— a great story that featured in Issue 8 of Cabinet Des Fées

The wolf in myths, legends and stories at Wolf Country.

A collection of Werewolf Legends from Germany, translated by D.L. Ashliman.

The Bad Wolf site, created by the BBC to accompany the 2005 series of Doctor Who throughout which the ominous sounding 'Bad Wolf' message was scattered.

Any more sitings of the wolf online? Feel free to add links using the comments function below.

The wolf image at the top of the post is a detail from an illustration by Gustave Doré.

New Fairy Tales vacancy

2010-01-26T16:36:00.008Z

New Fairy Tales is seeking an assistant editor:

You can live anywhere in the world as long as you have a reliable internet connection.
You must be passionate about fairy tales and related fiction.

Duties will primarily involve reading submissions and discussing them with the editor although there may be opportunities to do some marketing work too. Time-wise it shouldn’t take up more than a couple of hours a week, with perhaps a little more time required close to submission deadlines.

Unfortunately we can’t pay - the magazine run on a voluntary basis and tries to raise money for charity - but you will gain valuable experience from working on a growing online magazine.

Please send an email to Claire at editor@newfairytales.co.uk detailing a little bit about yourself, your creative experience, and what you love to read.

Deadline:
15th February 2010

The image is a postcard which uses an illustration the lovely Cate Simmons did for 'La Chureca' in Issue 4.

The Filigree - a fairytale newspaper!

2010-01-18T20:07:00.014Z

The Filigree is a quarterly fairytale newspaper packed with articles inspired by fairy tales, folklore and myth. You'll find everything inside you'd expect in a 'normal' newspaper - including gossip columns, sports, horoscopes, obituaries and classifieds. There are some brilliant adverts too (and some of the goods like 'Sailors N Sirens soap' are actually available to buy in The Fairy Tale General!).

The Spring 2009 issue is currently available as a free download, and you can flip through the Winter 09 issue too, so you can get a taste of all the lovely things inside. The level of detail is amazing, and the whole thing - all of the art dolls, photography, illustration and text - is produced by a husband and wife team in Nashville. Here are some pictures from the paper:

'More Mermaidens Arrested in Concordia Sinking', from Spring 'o9

'Rare Cloud Inspires Lamplighter to Set Sail' from Winter 'o9

'CandyTroll', from Spring 'o9

The Filigree is available as single issues or by subscription (for a very reasonable price) from their store and there is a fantastic gallery to explore on their site too. I'm definitely going to subscribe, I'm really excited about it, so I just wanted to help spread the word!

(all images from The Filigree, used with permission)

Auditions for a fairy tale film

2010-01-16T10:16:00.005Z

Please see the information from the fantastic Chagford Filmmaking Group below:

'Sir Lanval' Auditions - Friday 12th February - Venue: London Bubble Theatre Company, 5 Elephant Lane, London, SE16 4JD

The Chagford Filmmaking Group are auditioning for the lead roles in a 52 minute film of a twelfth century fairytale about a handsome young knight who falls in love with a fairy. It is a strong actors' drama with complex characters and relationships set in the court of King Arthur. Filming is in Devon and Brittany in May this year.

The Roles:
Sir Lanval - lead role - a young knight, playing age 20, French accent preferred but not essential, needs to move well and have a certain aura of innocence and beauty (sufficient to attract a fairy!)
Tryamour - the Fairy Queen, playing age 20, ability to dance preferred but not essential.
King Arthur - playing age 40, minimum height 5 ft 10.

Fee £500.

Preparation - we will email lines to learn and a synopsis of the story.

We also have other speaking parts to cast from amongst the auditionees although these will be unpaid. Expenses will be paid.

Shooting dates 16th-30th May 2010 with a 4 day intensive rehearsal weekend 23rd-26th April.

The budget for the film is around £20,000. The 58,000 euro award also covers a book, an exhibition, and the distribution of DVDs of the film to tourist centres across England and France.

Our co-partners are "Le Centre d'Imaginaire Arthurien" in Brittany.

Contact Alex at info@fairytalefilms.co.uk. Please include a photograph and CV. You can find more information on the project here.

Chagford Filmmaking Group is a non-profit organization dedicated to films of British fairytales. Sir Lanval is made possible by grants from the European Regional Development Fund and South West Screen.

Lots of lovely things to read....

2010-01-14T19:39:00.005Z

I'm currently battling with essay deadlines so I haven't got the time to present these links in the kind of posts they deserve, but three wonderful looking fairy tale reads have appeared in the last few days:

The new issue of Goblin Fruit, the fantastical poetry zine, which has been guest edited by Mike Allen of Mythic Delirum fame.

The new issue of Scheherezade's Bequest from the brilliant fairy tale journal Cabinet Des Fées.

And the fantastic looking Fairy Tale News New Year's Bumper Edition from Once Upon a Blog.

I can't wait to delve in!
- as soon as I've finished the essays :-(

Marina Warner on the RSC's Arabian Nights

2010-01-10T21:27:00.014Z

It's been a fantastic season for fairy tale theatre in the UK, as well as the ubiquitous pantomime there have been many exciting productions drawing on fairy tales and folklore. I've been lucky enough to see two of them - The Library Theatre's Grimm Tales (deliciously dark with a great selection of tales) and En Masse Theatre Company's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (enjoyable and inventive - the audience all had to don green lensed glasses when Dorothy and friends reached The Emerald Kingdom!).

One other production I would love to see is the RSC's Arabian Nights. Marina Warner wrote an article about it in yesterday's Guardian. She reviews the production and she also gives us some fascinating tidbits of the history of the Nights on stage, here's just a taste:

'In the theatre especially, the sheer abundance of the plots of the Nights opened up possibilities: the book presented magical twists and turns that intrinsically lent themselves to high-spirited performance and to technical experiment. The history of the Nights on the stage is consequently intertwined with some brilliant early stagecraft for transformation scenes, flying machines, conjuring illusions, innovatory limelight and other effects (in Islington in the 1890s, the genies in Aladdin were called after the new gases, Paraffin, Benzoline and Colza).'

The Arabian Nights is on at the RSC's Courtyard Theatre until the 30th January. And although the glut of seasonal fairy tale shows has now nearly passed there is Andersen's English to look forward to - a new production by Out of Joint, written by novelist Sebastian Barry:

'Celebrated children's writer Hans Christian Andersen arrives, unannounced, for a stay at Gad's Hill Place in the Kent marshes - home to Charles Dickens and his large, charismatic family.

To the lonely and eccentric guest, the members of Dicken's household seem to live a life of unreachable bliss. But with his broken English, Andersen doesn't at first see the tensions in the family: undeclared passions, a son sent to serve in India, and a growing strangeness at the heart of Dickens's marriage.'

This should be interesting, especially as the relationship between the two writers soured after this visit. The production will be touring in Spring 2010.

(ps - If you follow the link to the Guardian to read Marina Warner's article I'd also recommend Margaret Atwood's plea for birds, which made me think of her beautiful essay 'Of Souls as Birds' in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, in which she explored her love of fairy tales in which people are transformed into birds)

The Fairy Tale Project

2010-01-05T20:43:00.003Z

Just came across this intriguing fairy tale project, in which each artist is contributing a paragraph and an illustration to the story before it is passed along to someone else. The story takes a new turn with each contributor and there are some lovely illustrations - definitely one to follow.

Enchanted Conversation - The Sleeping Beauty Issue

2010-01-05T20:02:00.006Z

Enchanted Conversation is a new blogazine dedicated to fairy tales. Each of the quarterly issues will be dedicated to a particular fairy tale and feature an eclectic mix of fiction, poetry, articles, essays, art and reviews.

In The Sleeping Beauty Issue there's lots to enjoy, including recipes to feed a castle full of people who've just woken up from a 100 year sleep (A Royal Awakening), the real bad fairy confesses - and it isn't the one you'd expect (The Twelfth Fairy Confesses), one princess is starved of stories (Apathy), and another questions the fairy tale ending (Happily Ever After), we learn about Steampunk + Fairy Tales and there's much, much more.

The issue also looks beautiful, I love the way editor Kate Wolford has included a mix of classic and contemporary illustration, along with fabulous etsy buys.

The magazine is based on a blog to encourage participation, readers are encouraged to comment on the contents and enter the conversation about the featured tale, there are contests you can enter too.

The next issue will be focused on Beauty and the Beast and you can find the submissions info here.

New Fairy Tales Competition - winners picked...

2010-01-01T15:53:00.009Z

...from inside my favourite pair of socks.

The wonderful 'New Fairy Tale Nymph' will be winging its way to Samantha in the UK.

The fantastic fairy tale Ream will be flying to Christina in Australia.

Congratulations to the winners!!! And thank you so much to everyone else who took the time to donate to Derian House.

As a special thank you runners up will also be receiving a little set of New Fairy Tales postcards.

I'd also like to say thank you to Particle Article - without their generosity the competition wouldn't have been possible. You can see more of their fantastical creatures here and if you'd love one for yourself (I would!) you'll find a list of their stockists here.

And thank you also to Oona Patterson, who has sent a beautiful signed card to go with Ream to make it extra special. If you'd like a copy of the book (a new year treat!) you can buy it here and you can see more of her amazing work here.

Happy New Year! May the new year bring you what you wish for - and remember to wish wisely!

Merry Christmas everyone

2009-12-23T20:06:00.007Z

and very best winter wishes.
See you in 2010.
Claire x

ps there's still time to enter the New Fairy Tales competition, all the details you'll need are here.

Queens of snow and ice

2009-12-21T23:30:00.009Z

When I was little I could see two hills from my bedroom window and I was convinced that the White Witch from the Narnia books lived between them (I also spent a lot of time trying to get through the back of wardrobes). I wasn't scared of her - I wanted to find a way to visit her. There's something about cold queens, ice queens that has always fascinated me. When Edmund first meets the White Witch, who has imposed eternal winter (without Christmas) on Narnia, we are told 'Her face was white - not merely pale, but white like snow or paper or icing-sugar, except for her very red mouth. It was a beautiful face in other respects, but proud and cold and stern.'

Her entrance, in a sleigh, is so similar to Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Snow Queen' (1845) that it seems impossible that Lewis was not influenced by the earlier story. Though unlike the White Witch the Snow Queen is actually made of ice:

'This snow-flake grew larger and larger, till at last it became the figure of a woman, dressed in garments of white gauze, which looked like millions of starry snow-flakes linked together. She was fair and beautiful, but made of ice—shining and glittering ice. Still she was alive and her eyes sparkled like bright stars, but there was neither peace nor rest in their glance.'

Andersen's Snow Queen sits in her palace on a frozen lake which she calls 'The Mirror of Reason' and so, cold and barren, she embodies Andersen's ideas about reason and science. But he also created another ice woman - 'The Ice Maiden' (1861) - who he uses for the opposite role - she represents the forces of nature and is the enemy of reason, although she also has to have what she wants...

'Ice Maiden—the queen of the glaciers. It is she whose mighty power can crush the traveller to death, and arrest the flowing river in its course. She is also a child of the air, and with the swiftness of the chamois she can reach the snow-covered mountain tops, where the boldest mountaineer has to cut footsteps in the ice to ascend. She will sail on a frail pine-twig over the raging torrents beneath, and spring lightly from one iceberg to another, with her long, snow-white hair flowing around her, and her dark-green robe glittering like the waters of the deep Swiss lakes. “Mine is the power to seize and crush,” she cried. “Once a beautiful boy was stolen from me by man,—a boy whom I had kissed, but had not kissed to death. He is again among mankind, and tends the goats on the mountains. He is always climbing higher and higher, far away from all others, but not from me. He is mine'

'The Ice Maiden' was inspired by the death of Andersen's father, which he talks about in his autobiography The True Story of my Life:

"He is dead," said my mother, addressing it; "thou needest not call him. The ice maiden has fetched him."

I understood what she meant. I recollected that, in the winter before, when our window panes were frozen, my father pointed to them and showed us a figure as that of a maiden with outstretched arms. "She is come to fetch me," said he, in jest. And now, when he lay dead on the bed, my mother remembered this, and it occupied my thoughts also.'

Snegurochka, a woman made of snow, rather than ice, appears in Russian fairy tales; in one variant, 'The Snow Maiden', she is fashioned from snow by an old childless couple, and in the Russian festive tradition Snegurochka is the granddaughter and assistant of Ded Moroz, Grandfather Frost, the Russian equivalent of Father Christmas (you'll find lots of lovely illustrations of her in a post on A Polar Bear's Tale). In contrast to the cold women I've mentioned above the Snow Maiden is kindlier, and made to suffer by others, and hers is not a happy ending because snow melts too easily.

Ice is hard, sharp and clear; it offers an illusion of permanence - it reminds us of glass. It is this last similarity that A.S. Byatt has played on to wonderful effect in the fairy tale 'Cold', from her collection Elementals. In the tale, Fiammarosa, a princess descended from an icewoman, is docile and doughy when kept in the warmth, but she is enlivened by the cold, and once she discovers this she escapes the palace at night to dance in the snow...

'And one night, as she moved, she found that her whole body was encased in a transparent, crackling skin of ice, that broke into spiderweb-fine veined sheets as she danced, and then reformed. The sensation of this double skin was delicious. She had frozen eyelashes and saw the world through an ice-lens'

Yet she falls in love with Sasan, a desert prince, wooed by his amazingly intricate glass sculptures. She sees the resemblance between glass and ice but she knows nothing of the dangerous heat that glass must be formed in.

Byatt has said the tale is about her relationship to writing, and in her essay 'Ice, Snow, Glass' in Mirror, Mirror on the Wall she says that even as a girl she knew that 'there was something secretly good, illicitly desirable, about the ice hills and glass barriers.' She later says:

'The frozen stony women became my images of choosing the perfection of the work, rejecting (so it seemed to me then, though I have done my best to keep my apple and swallow it) the imposed biological cycle, blood, kiss, roses, birth, death and the hungry generations.'

Fiammarosa also finds a compromise, although this has to be within the confines of a chilled palace in the heart of a mountain, at the edge of the desert kingdom:

'And if Fiammarosa was sometimes lonely in her glass palace, and sometimes wished both that Sasan would come more often, and that she could roam amongst fjords and ice-fells, this was not unusual, for no one has everything they desire. But she was resourceful and hopeful, and made a study of the vegetation of the Sasanian snow-line, and a further study of which plants could thrive in mountain air under glass windows, and corresponded - at long intervals - with authorities all over the world on these matters.'

It seems there is a choice for ice queens, who think, as Fiammarosa does at first, that there is 'more life in coldness. In solitude. Inside a crackling skin of protective ice'. They can stay out in the cold, or, take the risk of melting a little, but either way happiness comes and goes in flurries, just like the snow.

A few other icy paths to travel...
The Snow Queen in a beautiful digitised copy of Stories from Hans Andersen, illustrated by Edmund Dulac.
A lovely digitised copy of The Ice Maiden.
The Snow Queen, a poem by Jeannine Hall Gailey from the JOMA archives.
This week is Snow Queen week on the SurLaLune blog and Heidi Anne Heiner will be featuring several of the adaptations of the tale.

Thank you to Graham Dean and Louise Dean for the fantastic photographs!

What happened to Cinderella?

2009-12-20T11:56:00.002Z

There was a new Cinderella story in yesterday's Guardian by Man Booker prize winner Hilary Mantel, with lovely illustrations by Posy Simmonds.

'Cinderella in Autumn' is an intriguing look at life for Cinderella 20 years after the wedding. The story is shot through with references to our times - Cinderella is stalked by paparazzi, her remaining stepsister is hoping the Tories get in, and the prince runs a scheme for young people involving white water rafting that 'brings out your potential and fits you for a destiny'. And we discover that the Prince has always had more of a relationship with her shoes than with Cinderella herself: 'She would see him, in absent moments, caressing the glass heel, which would seem to grow higher under his fingertips.'

I'm not going to say too much more because it's a good read, and I don't want to spoil it, but I do like the way Mantel has used the story to comment on our fame obsessed culture and the depressing fact that, for some girls, marrying a prince (or sleeping with a golfer) might still be thought of as the best route to happiness.

Grimm Tales

2009-12-14T21:02:00.003Z

I went to see Grimm Tales at Manchester's Library Theatre last week and it was fantastic! Energetically performed and deliciously dark - it was great to see the Grimm's tales getting an outing with the grim bits left in.

First performed in 1994 at the Young Vic, the play was adapted from the Grimm's tales by Carol Ann Duffy and dramatised by Tim Supple. This production has been directed for the Library Theatre by Rachel O'Riordan and is engagingly performed by eight actors, dressed like a raggedy troupe of storytellers, who dance, act, make music and tell the tales with relish.

One of the things I really enjoyed was the eclectic selection of tales; there was a real mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar. I also thought the inclusion of Ashputtel and The Lady and the Lion worked well as people are usually more familiar with their French literary predecessors, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast.

Here are the Grimm's tales that are used in the show in versions that are available online:

Hansel and Gretel (here I've linked to a page that gives translations of both the 1812 and 1857 versions - which makes for very interesting reading)
The Golden Goose
Ashputtel
Iron Hans
The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage
The Lady and the Lion (also known as The Singing, Springing Lark)
Little Red Cap

I'd also really recommend Carol Ann Duffy's book Rumpelstiltskin and other Grimm Tales (1999) which includes her versions of all of the above (apart from The Mouse, the Bird and the Sausage), and many more, and is a delight to read.

There's an interview with Duffy on the Library Theatre website, in which she talks about how she went about retelling the tales.

I've also written a review of the show for a site called Artsphere here.

Grimm Tales is on at The Library Theatre until 23rd January - get there if you can!

Moss Witch by Sara Maitland

2009-12-07T15:05:00.007Z

I just wanted to draw your attention to a wonderful story that is on the shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award and currently available to listen to online, or download, as a podcast.

'Moss Witch' is set in a remote tract of ancient woodland in Western Scotland and involves an encounter between a young bryologist (his hair, 'the colour of winter killed bracken') and a Moss Witch (her face, 'carved with long wrinkles running up and down her forehead and cheeks'). The story is beautifully read by Hannah Gordon and I'm not going to give anything else away because I don't want to spoil it, you will just have to listen to it. Even better, listen to it and buy the book it's published in too (details below).

There is something so magical about moss; I grew up in a house beside a wood, and even in the dead of winter, when empty branches let through so much stark grey sky, and the air is bitterly cold, there is a softness to the wood where the ground is carpeted, and the trees clothed, in moss. I'm sure moss softens sounds too, creating a special hush and adding a sense of otherworldliness to the places where it thrives and hides. 'Moss Witch' captures this perfectly.

Author Sara Maitland, a writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction, is no stranger to writing fairy tale and folklore inspired fiction (see her two most recent collections Far North & Other Dark Tales and On Becoming a Fairy Godmother). She is also currently working on a book about fairy stories and forests.

'Moss Witch' is published in When it Changed, an anthology edited by Geoff Ryman, and published by the brilliant Comma Press, a Manchester based independent publisher who have a talent for bringing wonderful books into being (I've read two of their other books this year Under the Dam, by David Constantine and Stone Tree, by Gyrðir Elíasson, which if you love haunting, well-crafted short fiction I'd highly recommend).

When it Changed is the result of a collaboration between writers and scientists 'Composed collaboratively – through a series of visits and conversations between leading authors and practicing scientists – it offers fictionalised glimpses into the far corners of current research'. Maitland effortlessly combines the scientific detail, I imagine she gleaned from her scientist, with magical prose.

I urge you to listen to 'Moss Witch' when you get a quiet moment. I've only really discovered the delight of listening to audio stories this year, and I find that especially when my eyes are too tired to read, but I'm still longing for a story to help me divide work from sleep, they are the perfect accompaniment to a bath (be sure to cleverly wrap your MP3 player though - I've already lost one to steam damage!).

You can download or listen to 'Moss Witch' and the four other finalists here.

The winner will be announced live from the awards ceremony tonight at 7.15pm on BBC Radio 4's Front Row.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Sara Maitland!

The photograph is of a tree in the woods by the house I grew up in.

Marina Warner podcast

2009-12-03T20:01:00.007Z

Marina Warner's recent lecture ‘Figures in the Carpet: Magic and the 1001 Nights’, which I blogged about here, is now available as a podcast.

If, like me, you love books of hers, such as From the Beast to the Blonde and Phantasmagoria, then you'll really enjoy this (and if you haven't read those books you definitely should!). Warner has a wonderful way of bringing together all kinds of fascinating tidbits from the realms of history, culture and myth, and exploring the connections between them in an engaging and enlightening way.

In this lecture she examines the magic of the flying carpet, from its earliest association with Solomon, through its appearances in the Nights, and in its ongoing influence as a 'metaphor activated as fact'. She explores human fantasies of flight, and some of the other domestic flying vehicles of folklore (including beds and sofas), before settling on Freud's couch and the importance of its own 'magic carpet'.

You can listen to or download the podcast from the Queen Mary, University of London website here.

Photograph by Elke Bock 2003

Fundraising exhibition for The House of Fairy Tales

2009-12-03T13:56:00.006Z

See The House of Fairy Tales or The Last Tuesday Society for more details.

New Fairy Tales Competition

2009-11-30T10:15:00.005Z

To celebrate the launch of our fourth issue, and to help raise money for our nominated charity Derian House Children's Hospice, we are holding a fantastic competition and offering readers who make a small donation the chance to win one of two fantastic prizes...

For readers in the UK, the prize is a beautiful, specially commissioned, fairy tale creature called the 'New Fairy Tale Nymph', which has been created by artists Amy Nightingale and Claire Benson of the wonderful Particle Art icle (who create the magazine's 'Creatures from the Curiosity Cabinet'). The creature, who has a retail value of £130, will thrive in a fairy tale loving home. We can only offer this prize to readers in the UK for fear that the delicate creature might not survive the ravages of international posting.

I hope readers outside the UK won't be too disappointed though, for them the prize on offer is a beautiful hardback illustrated fairy tale called Ream, by paper artist Oon a Patterson, whose work features on the front cover of, and inside, the new issue. Oona's delicate papercuttings are truly enchanting and this is a wonderful book (I know because I have a copy). Oona has also signed a lovely postcard which will fly to the winner too.

So, if you'd like to enter: first, to be eligible, you need to make a small donation to Derian House via our JustGiving page here - this is quick, totally secure and all major cards are accepted (from inside and outside the UK). The minimum donation the site accepts is £2. Please note that because your donation is linked to a competition it won't be eligible for GiftAid so make sure you tick the boxes appropriately. Then, and this is really important, you must come back here and fill out your name, email address and country on the form I've linked to below, JustGiving doesn't automatically send all of your details to me so if you don't do this you can't be entered. I will use your details only to enter you into the competition, they will not be passed to anyone else, and will be securely deleted once the competition has been drawn. Please don't fill out this form unless you've made a donation.

The form is here:
http://newfairytales.co.uk/tinc?key=YAgOl70g&formname=competition

The competition will close to entries at midnight GMT on the 30th December. The draw will be made in front of witnesses on the evening of 31st December and the winners will be notified by email on the 1st January 2010.

If you've got any questions please feel free to post a comment below or email me.

Thanks,
Claire

New Fairy Tales Issue 4

2009-11-30T10:12:00.000Z

Issue 4 of the online magazine I edit is launched today!

Thanks to the very exciting flash based technology we've just started using for the magazine I can display it right here:

There is also a PDF version available on the website and I'd also recommend a visit to the site if you want to find out more about the magazine or to sample the delights of our audio collection.

There is also an amazing competition linked to this issue, more details will follow in my next post...

A little more on red shoes...

2009-11-29T14:45:00.006Z

Whilst researching the red shoes post below I emailed Amy Leach, Co-Artistic Director of the fantastic En Masse theatre company, whose production The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is on at The Dukes, in Lancaster, until 2nd January. I'd read that theirs was a more faithful representation of the book than we're usually treated to, so I was intrigued to know whether they'd kept the book's silver shoes or changed them to the ruby ones most people are familiar with.

Amy says:

'The film is brilliant and a favourite of ours, but we felt that it was important to find a way of telling the story onstage which was theatrical rather than filmic. So whilst we've still left out lots from Baum's original tale... we kept his original silver slippers. The ruby ones worked brilliantly in the film, especially as they embraced the advances in Technicolor. But our silver ones still get lots of gasps as they are so sparkly.'

And they have also given another piece of footwear importance in the story:

'I think shoes in fairytales and stories have such a potent power and one thing we have changed, which is our own addition to the narrative, concerns the shoes. Near the start of our version, Dorothy goes to discard her worn old boots when she puts on the glittering shoes. She is unhappy that they were made by her Uncle Henry and she really wants some new ones. Glinda holds onto the boots "just in case". At the end of the play, Glinda reappears to tell her that the silver shoes aren't powerful enough to get her home and that she should put her old boots on. As Dorothy puts on the boots, made by her loving Uncle, she remembers the comfort and care of her home and it is these worn old boots that are clicked together to send her home. As a little nod to the film, our worn boots are laced with ruby red ribbons. So we've tried to give the shoes in our new version more power and symbolism.'

There's a rich crop of fairy tale inspired productions on in the UK this Christmas (see the many links in the sidebar), and this is one that's happily close enough for me to get to see - I can't wait!

(yes, I included the picture of my red shoes again, I couldn't help myself!)

Red shoes

2009-11-28T18:26:00.005Z

I've been thinking about red shoes. After reading about the forthcoming re-release of Powell and Pressburgers' stunning film The Red Shoes; now restored to its full Technicolor glory (clips of the existing version here and here); and the accompanying exhibition at the BFI, I decided to go back to the Andersen tale, which inspired the film.

This is Andersen at his most moralising and macabre; Karen is a poor orphan, taken in by a well meaning old lady, and when she is unintentionally bought a pair of beautiful red shoes to wear to her confirmation (the old lady can't see very well), all she can think about during the service is the shoes. The shoes seem to call to her to be worn, and once she starts dancing in them she can't stop; they dance her ragged; 'dance she did and dance she must, over field and meadow, in rain and in sunshine, night and day'. Even when Karen begs an executioner to chop her feet off they continue to dance in the shoes and bar her way into the church.

The roots of the story lie in Andersen's own experience at his confirmation, which he relates in The True Story of my Life:

'An old female tailor altered my deceased father's great coat into a confirmation suit for me; never before had I worn so good a coat. I had also for the first time in my life a pair of boots. My delight was extremely great; my only fear was that everybody would not see them, and therefore I drew them up over my trousers, and thus marched through the church. The boots creaked, and that inwardly pleased me, for thus the congregation would hear that they were new. My whole devotion was disturbed; I was aware of it, and it caused me a horrible pang of conscience that my thoughts should be as much with my new boots as with God. I prayed him earnestly from my heart to forgive me, and then again I thought about my new boots.'

In the notes to Tiina Nunnally's translation of his tales, which is edited and introduced by Jackie Wullschlager, it is suggested that 'The red shoes dancing off with Karen's feet may have been inspired by the Grimms' folktale Snow White, where the queen dances herself to death in red-hot shoes.' We do know that Andersen read the Grimms' tales and that he got to know them personally (after a rather awkward first encounter, which you can read about in The True Story of my Life) so this is a plausible theory.

There is also a tale by the Grimms that features red shoes - The Juniper Tree. But here, in a very dark tale, the shoes aren't portrayed in a negative light - they are a wonderful gift, from a murdered little boy (now in the form of a bird), to his sister:

'Then she was light-hearted and joyous, and she put on the new red shoes, and danced and leaped into the house. "Ah," said she, "I was so sad when I went out and now I am so light-hearted; that is a splendid bird, he has given me a pair of red shoes!"

I first read Andersen's The Red Shoes as an adult, so for me, before that, red shoes belonged to Dorothy. I did read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a child, but I had shock when I revisited the story because I hadn't remembered that in the book the shoes are silver not red (perhaps I refused to ever read it as silver - I could be stubborn like that). They changed the colour of the shoes in the film to take advantage of the Technicolor.

In Oz the shoes are worn by the Wicked Witch of the East - until she is squashed by Dorothy's house. One of the Munchkins says, 'there is some charm connected with them; but what it is we never knew'. The magical shoes (silver or red) protect her from the Wicked Witch of the West, and they are, of course, the key to her way home.

So, red shoes; good or bad, they're certainly desirable, and I've always found that wearing them makes me happy; perhaps they lead to dancing, but never too much, and anyway, if I get tired I can always click my heels together three times...

Some other places to look for red shoes: the Anne Sexton poem The Red Shoes, the Kate Bush song The Red Shoes, the Pope's feet, The Ruby Slipper Fan Club, and the mysterious case of the stolen shoes.

Thanks to Graham Dean for the photograph of the red shoes (the feet and the shoes are mine!)

Tim Burton exhibition at MoMA

2009-11-20T10:39:00.012Z

Couldn't resist posting about this! A major Tim Burton retrospective will be opening to the public at MoMA from November 22, 2009–April 26, 2010. From their website:

'This exhibition explores the full range of his creative work, tracing the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work in film. It brings together over seven hundred examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera from such films as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood, and Beetlejuice, and from unrealized and little-known personal projects that reveal his talent as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer working in the spirit of Pop Surrealism.'

Visit the MoMA blog for behind the scenes info, and The Guardian for a video of the exhibition's opening (I love the bit where Helena Bonham Carter, talking about how mind-blowing it is that his work is being celebrated at MoMA, says, 'he's not even dead yet I mean most people are dead when they get celebrated').

You can also see a preview of works from the exhibition on the Guardian website here. And the full MoMA website for the exhibition will be available from the 22nd (it's in preview mode at the moment but still well worth exploring!).

Addition to original post: Just found this too!

Free public lecture by Marina Warner

2009-11-16T21:40:00.004Z

'The Figures in the Carpet: Magic and the 1001 Nights'

On Tuesday 24th November, Marina Warner will give her inaugural lecture as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London. If you can get there this is an opportunity not to be missed:

Professor Warner, an expert on fairy tales, will focus on the story of the magic carpet, its appearances in the Arabian Nights and its connection to airborne fantasies prior to the invention of flying machines.
“For as long as people have told stories, flight has been a magical, divine power conferred on fairy tale heroes and heroines,” explains Marina Warner, who is also a professor at the University of Essex, in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies.

“And many myths and tales tell of fantastic flying vehicles that enable such characters to take to the skies,” she says. “Most famous of all of these is the ‘magic carpet’; synonymously linked to the Arabian Nights and everything the stories promise – free-floating fantasy, exoticism, pleasure, and trouble-free travel,” she added.

This well-known symbol has a history and a context, and Professor Warner will explore how they are interwoven with modern ideas of narrative, fantasy, and consciousness.

All the details you'll need to attend are here.

And for those, like me, who wish they had a flying carpet so that they could get to London for the lecture, but unfortunately don't, here's an excerpt and link to a tale from the Arabian Nights which features a magic carpet;

The Prince called to the crier, and asked to see the tapestry, which seemed to him to be valued at an exorbitant price, not only for the size of it, but the meanness of the stuff; when he had examined it well, he told the crier that he could not comprehend how so small a piece of tapestry, and of so indifferent appearance, could be set at so high a price.
The crier, who took him for a merchant, replied: "If this price seems so extravagant to you, your amazement will be greater when I tell you I have orders to raise it to forty purses, and not to part with it under." "Certainly," answered Prince Houssain, "it must have something very extraordinary in it, which I know nothing of." "You have guessed it, sir," replied the crier, "and will own it when you come to know that whoever sits on this piece of tapestry may be transported in an instant wherever he desires to be, without being stopped by any obstacle."

From The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou (as retold by Andrew Lang in The Blue Fairy Book)

If the story seems familiar it might be because elements of it inspired Lotte Reiniger's 1926 feature-length silhouette film The Adventures of Prince Ahmed (this is a great link if you're interested in Reiniger's work).

And I couldn't resist linking to this 2007 article from New Scientist: Three ways to levitate a magic carpet. Perhaps one day a trip down to London on a magic carpet may be more than just a dream!

Addition to the post: a podcast of the lecture is now available here.

How to write child-friendly fairy tale opera (keep it nasty, brutish and short)

2009-11-14T10:28:00.002Z

If you're looking for a show to take children to this Christmas your first thought might not be opera, but in yesterday's Guardian, Johnathan Dove, the composer of two fantastical operas that are being performed for the festive season, explained why fairy tales are the perfect inspiration for opera that children can enjoy:

Family-friendly opera must be nasty, brutish and short – and go easy on the slow passages

In the article he says that 'opera thrives of fairytales' but explains that, when first working with writer Alasdair Middleton on a family-friendly opera three years ago, their first choice for an adaptation, Donkeyskin, hit upon some obstacles;

It begins brilliantly, with a donkey that produces golden faeces – just the thing for a family show, we thought. Then the king decides he wants to marry his daughter (she eventually escapes in the donkey's skin). That was an insurmountable obstacle: the producers agreed with us that this could be told as a funny scene, but they knew that no teacher would bring their class to see it, for fear of the rather tricky questions they might get asked afterwards.

Instead they used The Enchanted Pig, which was an enormous success at the Young Vic and will be performed this year at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio from the 10th December - 2nd of January.

The Enchanted Pig is a Romanian fairy tale about a princess who must marry a pig - a pig who luckily turns into a prince at night - and her journey to save him from the enchantment. The quest shares similarities with East of the Sun West of the Moon, and the beginning of the tale, with its forbidden room, resembles Bluebeard.

Andrew Lang included a version of The Enchanted Pig in the Red Fairy Book, which you can read here.

Swanhunter is a new production, touring with Opera North until the 13th December. The story is taken from the epic Finnish poem The Kalevela - which was compiled in the 19th century from Finnish and Karelian folklore - and follows Lemminkäinen as he undertakes a series of tasks to win a wife. Whilst trying to shoot a swan he is killed, dismembered, and thrown into the River of Death, but his mother reassembles his body and brings him back to life.

You can read the tale which is usually referred to as 'The first Lemminkäinen cycle' (runes 11-15), here.

Even if you can't see the shows I hope you still enjoy the tales.

Profile: Goldilocks

2009-11-11T10:45:00.003Z

Who's that girl? Who indeed, and is she a girl? An old lady? Or even a fox? And is she a real blonde, or a silver locks?

Yes a bit like the three bears' chairs Goldilocks comes in all shapes and sizes. She has morphed from old lady (or a fox - nobody can be certain which came first - although Joseph Jacobs thought that Robert Southey mistakenly took the term vixen to mean an old woman), into the delightful little madam we know today. Other names she's gone by include; Silver Hair, Silver locks, Goldenlocks, and Golden Hair.

Age: The tale appears in one guise or another from the early 1800s although it's likely that it was being told long before that. For a long time Southey's 'The Story of the Three Bears', first published in 1837, was thought to be the oldest surviving literary version, but then in 1951 Eleanor Mure's 1831 version was discovered in Toronto Public Library's Osborne collection. The title page of the book says it's 'The celebrated nursery tale of The Three Bears put into verse and embellished with drawings for a Birth-day present to Horace Broke' (Mure's nephew).

As for our subject's age in the story, she was an old woman until 1849 when Joseph Cundall wrote in the dedication to his children at the beginning of A treasury of pleasure books for young children;

The " Story of the Three Bears" is a very old Nursery Tale, but it never was so well told as by the great poet Southey, whose version I have (with permission) given you, only I have made the intruder a little girl instead of an old woman. This I did because I found that the tale is better known with SILVER-HAIR, and because there are so many other stories of old women.

Location: English, perhaps - as with any fairy tale there's no way of saying for definite where she first came from!

Friends: Well she doesn't seem to have many, the Bears (who incidentally were originally all male) don't seem to like her much and who can blame them - whether she's a 'vagrant' with her 'ugly, dirty head' on Little, Small, Wee Bear's pillow (Southey), or the pretty little girl contemporary illustrators so like to portray; she was still breaking and entering, stealing porridge and thoughtlessly destroying their property. Although the Bear's treatment of her does vary - from trying, unsuccessfully, to burn her and chucking her 'aloft on St. Paul's church-yard steeple' (in Mure's version), to just standing back and letting her jump from the window.

And as Southey says 'whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction' - who knows?

Best lines written about her:
The prize has to go to Mr Dahl for his alternative finale to the tale:

... in the book as you will see,
The little beast gets off scot-free,
While tiny children near and far
Shout, 'Goody-good! Hooray! Hurrah!'
'Poor darling Goldilocks!' they say,
'Thank goodness that she got away!'
Myself, I think I'd rather send
Young Goldie to a sticky end.
'Oh daddy!' cried the Baby Bear,
'My porridge gone! It isn't fair!'
'Then go upstairs,' the Big Bear said,
'Your porridge is upon the bed.
'But as it's inside mademoiselle,
'You'll have to eat her up as well.'

Places to look for her online:
You can see five pages from Eleanor Mure's 1831 version here. I've also been told by The Osborne Collection at Toronto Public Library that they will be publishing a facsimile of the book next year.

You can read Robert Southey's 1837 version in his book of essays, The Doctor.

Also first published in 1837 was George Niccol's versified version of Southey's tale.

There is a lovely digitised copy of Joseph Cundall's 1849 version in which he changed the old woman into a girl called Silver-hair available on The Internet Archive.

Scrapefoot is the tale of the three Bears and the Fox, and it was collected by Joseph Jacobs in More English Fairy Tales in 1894.

I have searched and searched with no luck for a digitised copy of The Old Nursery Stories and Rhymes, from circa 1904, illustrated by John Hassall, which is thought to be the version in which she was first called Goldilocks. If any one knows of an online copy it would be wonderful if you could leave a comment below.

The story as told by Flora Annie Steel and illustrated by Arthur Rackham in English Fairy Tales 1918 is available on Project Gutenberg.

Read all about her history in pantomime at It's-behind-you.

Visit SurLaLune for an annotated version of the story, more history, a collection of illustrations and a list of modern interpretations.

Extras...
It should be noted that not many delinquent little girls can say they have scientific theories named after them but Goldilocks can - you can read up on the Goldilocks Principle here.

And just for fun play at being a horrid little girl and splat the bears with some porridge!

The Goldilocks above is by illustrator Darren Wren, you can see more of his great work on his website.

AS Byatt reviews Maria Tatar

2009-11-07T11:22:00.008Z

A quick link to a review I very happily discovered on opening this morning's Guardian:
Enchanted Hunters: the Power of Stories in Childhood by Maria Tatar

'This is a grown-up book for grown-up people who haven't forgotten being childhood readers. It satisfies imagination and curiosity, revisiting things you suddenly remember clearly, telling you new things you didn't know.'

Although, as Byatt says, the book is 'not about classic fairytales but about authored children's writing' there are mentions of Andersen and the Grimms, as well as Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz - which are often considered to be fairy tale like - alongside many other important children's classics. This is a study of 'what children take and need from stories, and how this is not always what parents imagine'.

I can't wait to read the book, and what a treat to read a review of Tatar by Byatt!

fairy tales and... fireworks

2009-11-05T14:40:00.006Z

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason, why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Bonfire Night - an excuse to glue our teeth together with rock-hard lumps of treacle toffee, gather in front of crackling fires in the dark November chill; and watch fireworks!

Today I thought I'd excerpt and link to two fairy tales, by two of my favourite writers, which feature fireworks; 'The Remarkable Rocket' by Oscar Wilde, first published in The Happy Prince and other Tales in 1888, and 'The Flying Trunk' by Hans Christian Andersen, first published in 1839:

The Remarkable Rocket

The King's son was going to be married, so there were general rejoicings. He had waited a whole year for his bride, and at last she had arrived. She was a Russian Princess, and had driven all the way from Finland in a sledge drawn by six reindeer. The sledge was shaped like a great golden swan, and between the swan's wings lay the little Princess herself. Her long ermine cloak reached right down to her feet, on her head was a tiny cap of silver tissue, and she was as pale as the Snow Palace in which she had always lived. So pale was she that as she drove through the streets all the people wondered. 'She is like a white rose!' they cried, and they threw down flowers on her from the balconies.

At the gate of the Castle the Prince was waiting to receive her. He had dreamy violet eyes, and his hair was like fine gold. When he saw her he sank upon one knee, and kissed her hand.

'Your picture was beautiful,' he murmured, 'but you are more beautiful than your picture;' and the little Princess blushed.

'She was like a white rose before,' said a young Page to his neighbour, 'but she is like a red rose now;' and the whole Court was delighted.

For the next three days everybody went about saying, 'White rose, Red rose, Red rose, White rose;' and the King gave orders that the Page's salary was to be doubled. As he received no salary at all this was not of much use to him, but it was considered a great honour, and was duly published in the Court Gazette.

When the three days were over the marriage was celebrated. It was a magnificent ceremony, and the bride and bridegroom walked hand in hand under a canopy of purple velvet embroidered with little pearls. Then there was a State Banquet, which lasted for five hours. The Prince and Princess sat at the top of the Great Hall and drank out of a cup of clear crystal. Only true lovers could drink out of this cup, for if false lips touched it, it grew grey and dull and cloudy.

'It is quite clear that they love each other,' said the little Page, 'as clear as crystal!' and the King doubled his salary a second time. 'What an honour!' cried all the courtiers.

read on

The Flying Trunk (in the translation from Andrew Lang's Pink Fairy Book)

There was once a merchant who was so rich that he could have paved the whole street, and perhaps even a little side-street besides, with silver. But he did not do that; he knew another way of spending his money. If he spent a shilling he got back a florin-such an excellent merchant he was till he died.

Now his son inherited all this money. He lived very merrily; he went every night to the theatre, made paper kites out of five-pound notes, and played ducks and drakes with sovereigns instead of stones. In this way the money was likely to come soon to an end, and so it did.

At last he had nothing left but four shillings, and he had no clothes except a pair of slippers and an old dressing-gown.

His friends did not trouble themselves any more about him; they would not even walk down the street with him.

But one of them who was rather good-natured sent him an old trunk with the message, 'Pack up!" That was all very well, but he had nothing to pack up, so he got into the trunk himself.

It was an enchanted trunk, for as soon as the lock was pressed it could fly. He pressed it, and away he flew in it up the chimney, high into the clouds, further and further away. But whenever the bottom gave a little creak he was in terror lest the trunk should go to pieces, for then he would have turned a dreadful somersault-just think of it!

read on

Hope you have a great Bonfire Night!

Today's lovely firework artwork is courtesy of my boys.

Scary fairy tales

2009-10-31T09:53:00.009Z

In The Fairy Tale Cupboard today, for your Halloween viewing pleasure, I present two brilliant short films of two very grim fairy tales. Created by Mucky Puppets, who sometimes also go by the moniker Theatre De Strange, and fresh from the success of last night's performance at the V&A (I wish I could have been there!) Enjoy...

Content Warning: you're probably not going to want to let young children watch these films!

And here's the tale, as collected by Joseph Jacobs.

And here's the tale, as told by the Brothers Grimm.

Thank you to Richard Mansfield, the creative mind and fingers behind Mucky Puppets, for giving me permission post these films here today. His next film will be an adaptation of the Grimm's incredibly dark tale 'When children played at slaughter' (based on two short tales excised from Children's and Household Tales after the 1812 edition, read only if you dare here - and don't say I didn't warn you, there's also an interesting article by Donald Haase on using this tale in his teaching here).

Richard is also working on 'Wolfskin', a silhouette feature film of an adult fairy tale he's written. I'd highly recommend a visit to the Mucky Puppets blog to watch his other fantastic films and keep up-to-date with his work. Richard can also be contacted by email at artymans@hotmail.com.

Thanks also to Graham Dean for the great spooky banner (the not so great or spooky pumpkin carving was courtesy of me!)

The House of Fairy Tales

2009-10-28T15:46:00.006Z

Who are they and what do they do?
The House of Fairy Tales is a child-centred creative education project set up by artists Gavin Turk and Deborah Curtis. Working with an extensive team of artists, performers, writers, educationalists, designers, musicians, film makers, dreamers and philosophers they put on fantastic events which use the vast narrative scope of fairy tales to create brilliant learning experiences for young people and their families.

This summer they toured the UK with their Caravan of Fairy Tales. You can watch a short film about the first event of the tour, at the Tate Modern, on the Tate Channel.

I was invited to be part of their event at the National Trust Clumber Park and I was blown away by the wonderful atmosphere, and the fantastic range of workshops, activities and performances taking place. You can read my previous post about it here.

Latest news
This weekend sees their 'Journey to Old Halloween' at The New Art Gallery in Walsall. If you can get there this really is an event not to be missed...

'Outside in the square a feast will welcome the people of Walsall with parkin, spit roasts and miniature toffee apples served from the Witches Gingerbread House as a series of characters welcome you to the past.

The mischievous and melancholic side of winter is celebrated by this unique celebration of all things dark and ghoulish. Entertainment, as it used to be before TV, will transform Gallery Square into a haunted fairground, with sideshow booths, games and strategies.

Come and join the circus for a journey to old Halloween and be taken on a time-travel journey through Celtic Samhain, Roman (the Goddess Pomona) and Early Christian All Hallows Eve mythology. Meet many characters and cultures along the way including a quick detour to the Mexican Day of the Dead.'

The event is being held to celebrate the launch of their new exhibitions at the gallery; 'Exquisite Trove' (31 October - 10 January 2010)

'A treasure trove of mysterious objects hidden on shelves, in cases, glass vessels, suitcases and assorted containers excitingly revealing their stories and fairy tale narratives.'

and

The House of Fairy Tales: A Portfolio made by Artists (31 October - 16 October 2010)

'discover the new and exciting ways fairy tales have been interpreted and
explored by the international artists who have produced this extraordinary series of images inspired by these familiar stories. You thought you knew what fairy tales were about? Think again.'

How you can get involved
In Summer 2010 The House of Fairy Tales will present The Festival of the Creative Act and they are looking for enthusiastic people from all over the UK to get involved. They need artists, performers, musicians, knitters, makers, sayers, soothsayer, doers, volunteers to be stewards and magical helpers for their events, and people to help spread the word. You can find more information on their website, where you can also sign up to their newsletter to be kept up-to-date with all of their activities.

The images in this post are by photographer Richard H Smith and are used with permission.

Once upon an apple day...

2009-10-21T11:33:00.007+01:00

Today here in the UK it's Apple day, a day intended to be 'both a celebration and a demonstration of the variety we are in danger of losing – not simply in apples, but richness and diversity of landscape, place, ecology and culture too'. The day was established by Common Ground, an organisation which links nature with culture and aims to inspire 'celebration as a starting point for action'.

So in celebration I thought I'd gather together a few links to fairy tales that feature apples. When I started researching this post only Snow White and the poisoned apple came immediately to mind but I soon found myself lost in a whole online orchard of stories! So for today here are just a few that caught my fancy...

The Glass Mountain - a Polish fairy tale, retold by Andrew Lang

Once upon a time there was a Glass Mountain at the top of which stood a castle made of pure gold, and in front of the castle there grew an apple-tree on which there were golden apples...

read on

Little Shepherd, or the Three Apples - a retelling by Myth Woodling of the tale Italo Calvino collected in his Italian Folktales (the book also contains another great apple story 'The Apple Girl' but I couldn't find any versions of it online)

As a little shepherd boy was driving some of his sheep to market, he passed a woman whom he had never seen before. She was carrying a basket of eggs on her head.

He tossed a stone at the basket. The stone caused the basket to fall and all the eggs to break.

The shepherd boy laughed at his mean prank. Yet, this woman was a strega, or witch, and enraged by his wicked deed, she pronounced a maledizione, or curse, upon him: "You shall grow no bigger until you've wed lovely Bargaglina of the three singing apples."

The shepherd boy just laughed again, but from that day on he ceased to grow...

read on

The Silver Plate and the Transparent Apple - a Russian fairy tale

There lived once a peasant with his wife and three daughters. Two of these girls were not particularly beautiful, while the third was sweetly pretty. However, as she happened to be a very good girl, as well as simple in her tastes, she was nicknamed Simpleton, and all who knew her called her by that name, though she was in reality far from being one.

Her sisters thought of nothing but dress and jewelry. The consequence was that they did not agree with their younger sister. They teased her, mimicked her, and made her do all the hard work. Yet Simpleton never said a word of complaint, but was ready to do anything. She fed the cows and the poultry. If anyone asked her to bring anything, she brought it in a moment. In fact, she was a most obliging young person.

One day the peasant had to go to a big fair to sell hay, so he asked his two eldest daughters what he should bring them.

"Bring me some red fustian to make myself a sarafan [coat without sleeves]," said the eldest.

"Buy me some yards of nankeen to make myself a dress," said the second.

Simpleton meanwhile sat in a corner looking at her sisters with great eagerness. Though she was a simpleton, her father found it hard to go away without asking her what she would like him to bring her, so he asked her too.

"Bring me, dear father," said she, "a silver plate and a transparent apple to roll about on it."...

read on

The Nine Peahens and the Golden Apples - a Serbian fairy tale retold by Andrew Lang

ONCE upon a time there stood before the palace of an emperor a golden apple tree, which blossomed and bore fruit each night. But every morning the fruit was gone, and the boughs were bare of blossom, without anyone being able to discover who was the thief...

read on

The Laughing Apple and the Weeping Apple - a Turkish fairy tale retold by Ignácz Kúnos

In olden time lived a Padishah who had three sons.

One day as the youngest was sitting in a kiosk, near which was a spring, there came an old woman to draw water. The boy threw a stone at her jug and broke it. Saying nothing the old woman went away, and presently returned with another jug. Again the youth threw a stone and shattered the jug. The woman went away as before, and returned a third time. The boy saw her, threw a stone at her jug and broke it as on the two previous occasions. Now spake the old woman:
"May you fall in love with the Laughing Apple and the Weeping Apple!" she said. With these words she disappeared...

read on

The Old Witch - an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs

Once upon a time there were two girls who lived with their mother and father. Their father had no work, and the girls wanted to go away and seek their fortunes. Now one girl wanted to go to service, and her mother said she might if she could find a place. So she started for the town. Well, she went all about the town, but no one wanted a girl like her...

read on

The Apple Tree Man - a song based on a traditional Somerset tale

In Somerset there lived two sons of a farmer who passed away
The elder son was vain and mean, the younger merry and gay
The elder son was left the farm, to his brother naught gave he
Save a tiny plot with a feeble ox, a donkey and apple tree.

(chorus) Old apple tree, we'll wassail thee and hoping thou wilt bear
The Lord doth know where we shall be to be merry another year
To blow well and to bear well and so merry let us be
Let everyone drink up a cup, here's health to the old apple tree.

read on

And of course Snow White as told by the Brothers Grimm

ONCE upon a time in the middle of winter, when the flakes of snow were falling like feathers from the sky, a queen sat at a window sewing, and the frame of the window was made of black ebony. And whilst she was sewing and looking out of the window at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell upon the snow. And the red looked pretty upon the white snow, and she thought to herself, "Would that I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of the window-frame"...

read on

There's also a fascinating article on the tale available in the JOMA archives; Snow, Glass, Apples: The Story of Snow White by Terri Windling.

The apple has many connotations in mythologies and folklore from around the world. If you'd like to find out more I'd recommend the following links:

Apple - an interesting article by Susa Morgan Black which explores the apple in folklore and details related traditions.

Apples and Apple Trees in Western European Myths, Legends and Folklore - brief synopses with useful details of sources.

Avalon - some background on the Arthurian 'Isle of Apples'.

And as a starting point for further exploration there are two interesting discussions centred around apples available on the SurLaLune discussion forum archive here and here

I'm off now for a mug of hot apple juice with cinnamon - Happy Apple Day!

The picture of apples above is by photographer Graham Dean (my Dad!) you can see more of his fantastic work here.

A must see - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

2009-10-18T16:33:00.020+01:00

Last night I had the wonderful pleasure of settling into the darkness of a cinema and being transported into the fantastical world of Doctor Parnassus. The early reviews I'd read had lead me to believe I would probably be disappointed by the film - and I'm not going to link to any of them here because they were wrong - it's an imaginative masterpiece!

The story is about Doctor Parnassus, a man who won immortality in a bet with the Devil, and who later, to regain his youth and win the love of a beautiful young woman, made another deal - promising to give the Devil any child he fathered once they reached the age of sixteen. Now he must win another wager with the Devil if he is to save his daughter Valentina.

For me this felt like a truly modern fairy tale; there were many echoes from older tales: the parent who has offered up their first born child as payment for what they want at the time; an unwise bargain with the devil; a character who plays a pipe and has a dubious association with a children's charity (which made me think of the Pied Piper). True to the fairy tale form, the magic of a mirror - which is the entrance to the imaginarium - is never questioned, and once someone has stepped through the mirror the world beyond is furnished by their own imagination. This leads to some wonderful settings, including a dark forest of stage prop trees, and ladders which reach up to the clouds...

But the real world is never far away; Doctor Parnassus' imaginarium is housed on a rickety theatre on wheels (read about what inspired it here) and is pulled through modern London's streets by horses. As well as the familiar tourist sites we are treated to the bleaker side of inner-city life - derelict buildings, the streets at pub chucking out time; a Homebase car park.

The corrupt Tony is clearly a comment on our despicable ex-prime minister - at one point we even see a front page from a tabloid with the character Tony's face where Blair's should be, the headline: 'Tony Liar'. Similarly a song and dance scene by violent policemen, which felt very close to Monty Python in style, had especially powerful resonance when I thought of the documented police violence at the G20 protests in April this year.

The film is flawlessly acted by a great ensemble cast, and it's visually stunning - after watching this film I can finally see the point of cgi; misapplied by so many films trying to create realistic versions of reality - here it is used wonderfully to create impossible worlds.

This is a film made with love, against the odds; as has been well documented both Heath Ledger and one of the film's producers, Bill Vince, died during production and the film struggled to find funding - a case of small-minded money men with no vision always taking the easier routes through life - and as Terry Gilliam has explained this was part of the inspiration behind the story. Most of all though this is a film about storytelling and the power of the imagination - as Parnassus at one point realises - 'the Universe is sustained by story'.

Doctor Parnassus is out at UK cinema's now - here is the official UK site.

The film is set for a Christmas release in the US - here is the US site.

The Doctor Parnassus Support Site has a list of other countries official sites, more information on release dates, and info about how you can help support this wonderful film by getting cinemas to show it.

There is also a not to be missed Doctor Parnassus section on Dreams, the online Terry Gilliam fanzine, which includes brilliant interviews, artwork, stills and clips.

Must reads -The Guardian, 'Great fairytales' (part 7)

2009-10-16T13:37:00.014+01:00

Today is the last in the Guardian's 'Great fairytales' series and the theme is 'Beastly Tales'. There's a fantastic afterword by Marina Warner which looks at the role of animals in fairy tales, I'm going to use an excerpt of it as a foreword here as I think it also serves as a good introduction to the different kinds of animal tales that feature in today's booklet:

'The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss commented that animals were "bons à penser" (good to think with), and fairytales speak through beasts to explore common experiences – fear of sexual intimacy, terror and violence and injustice, struggles for survival. A tradition of articulate, anthropomorphised creatures of every kind is as old as literature itself: animal fables and beast fairytales are found in ancient Egypt and Greece and India, and the legendary Aesop of the classics has his storytelling counterparts all over the world, who use crows and ants, lions and monkeys, ravens and donkeys to satirise the follies and vices of human beings and display along the way the effervescent cunning and high spirits of the fairytale genre.
By contrast with animal fables, where something of an animal's observable, actual character helps make the point (monkeys are clever, sharks, well, shark-like, in The Heart of a Monkey from Zanzibar), the beast of fairytale romance comes in fantasy shape – mythological creatures such as a dragon, a snake, a yellow dwarf, or, as AS Byatt translates one such beast, Mme d'Aulnoy's "Le Serpentin vert", as a "great green worm". They belong in a world of romance and psychology rather than satire and practical wisdom.'

Today's first tale is Beauty and the Beast by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (this link is to a French site which as well as a biography also contains a reproduction of the original text), first published in 1756 in France and 1757 in England, this is usually referred to as an abridgement of the first literary version of the tale by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. There's an excellent article by Terri Windling about the writers of literary fairy tales in France available online in the JOMA archives which I'd highly recommend if you'd like to find out more about these tales.

Also included in today's booklet are the tales; Hans My Hedgehog by the Brothers Grimm and translated by champion of fairy tales and children's literature Jack Zipes; and The Heart of a Monkey as retold by Andrew Lang from the Lilac Fairy Book.

The illustrations are today provided by Eleanor Davis (the one I've featured above is taken from The Beauty and the Beast) and once again I can't stress enough just how much better represented they are in the paper booklet; my favourite illustration from today is of the forlorn Beast, hunched over an image of Beauty; but you can only see it on the cover of the paper booklet, they've not included it online. If you've missed the paper booklets this week they are all available to buy online here.

I thought I would also give the credits for the whole of this brilliant series here, as they are featured inside the booklets but not anywhere that I could find online:

Editor: Lisa Allardice
Assistant editor: Ginny Hooker
Research: Stephanie Cross
Series editor: Philip Oltermann
Subeditor: Christian Sadler
Art Director: Gavin Brammall
Picture editor: Rachel Vere
Production: Russel Turk (part 1, part 2, part 3), Steve Coady (part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7),
Production editor: Amy Thompson

You can read my other posts on the series here:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6

Must reads -The Guardian, 'Great fairytales' (part 6)

2009-10-15T13:52:00.009+01:00

Today in 'Justice and punishment' the Guardian is treating us to some very grim tales indeed (although interestingly none of the tales in today's booklet is by the Grimms). There's Little Red Riding Hood, in her earliest literary appearance - as written by Charles Perrault and translated here by AE Johnson, who interestingly omits Perrault's afterword which warns of the dangers of wolves; 'I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.'

Most people will be more familiar with the Grimms' version of the tale Little Red Cap in which the girl is rescued by the huntsman, personally I like the versions where she rescues herself; see here for one of the oldest recorded versions of the oral tale and visit The Poetry Archive for the fantastic version by Roald Dahl. If you're interested in finding out more about the little girl in red see my profile of Little Red Riding Hood.

Today's booklet also includes the terrifying The One-Handed Murderer by one of my favourite writers Italo Calvino (taken from his wonderful collection Italian Folktales) and translated here by George Martin; the disturbing The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Naomi Lewis; and from the Arabian Nights The Fisherman and Ifrit, translated by Malcolm C Lyons.

In today's afterword Sarah Churchwell looks at rewards and punishments in fairy tales:

'Fairytales are secular; they believe that rewards come in this world, not the next. They are grounded in the violent truths of human passions, our most unacceptable, untamed, uncivilised, unruly impulses. We learn to rule them eventually, and the tales help teach us how to control our desires. But they also teach the useful lessons of recognising wolves, outwitting genies, and packing a pistol, just in case.'

Today's illustrations are by Tyler Garrison, and the one I've featured above is taken from Little Red Riding Hood. I think these are my favourites so far this week but once again they are much better represented in the paper booklet so get it if you can.

Must reads -The Guardian, 'Great fairytales' (part 5)

2009-10-14T15:00:00.001+01:00

'Most of the fairytales we know best were first published in popular books for young children in the mid-19th-century, and many of the heroines of these stories don't do much but wait patiently for their prince to come, or for someone else to rescue them from dangers and enchantments. But it was a skewed sample: there are thousands of folktales in the wolrd with heroines who are smart, courageous and resourceful, like Clever Gretchen. Hans may be "a bit simple" but he also has great determination. Without realising it he sells his soul to the devil in order to become the best huntsman in the world and marry Gretchen. It is she who figures out how he can ask a question the devil cannot answer, and thus break the contract. Anyone who reads this story can learn two things: not to sign agreements with over-friendly strangers, and to follow the advice of wise women.'

So says Alison Lurie in the afterword to today's Guardian booklet 'Wisdom and Folly' and I thought it was a great place to start this post. Too often in the fairy tales we still tell today women are relegated to pathetic princess part or they are the villainess (where as villains such as Bluebeard and his English incarnation Mr Fox have been banished from the children's canon). So in today's booklet I'd particularly urge you to read two stories where the girls triumph, Clever Gretchen, and the tale of The Black Geese - which is a wonderful retelling of a Baba Yaga tale (for more on Baba Yaga tales see SurLaLune's Baba Yaga page - and yes Baba Yaga is a villainess but at least it's often a girl who beats her!).

I've really enjoyed Lurie's retellings and her afterword this week so I can't wait to pick up a copy of her book 'Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales', first published in 1980 (I don't normally link directly to amazon from the blog but it's the only place I could find it so the link is here).

Other tales to enjoy from the booklet today are Jack and the Beanstalk, in the version by Joseph Jacobs, (and for more on Jack see my recent profile of him) and The Mixed-Up Feet and the Silly Bridegroom by Isaac Bashevis Singer, as retold by Elizabeth Shub.

The gorgeous illustrations are today provided by Pietari Posti, the one I've featured above is from Clever Gretchen.

Tomorrow's booklet is 'Justice and Punishment' and will include; The Red Shoes, Little Red Riding Hood, and The One-Handed Murderer.

Posts on Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of the series.

Must reads - Goblin Fruit - Autumn 2009

2009-10-14T10:30:00.003+01:00

I decided to treat myself last night, so I curled up in a shawl in my big old armchair, laptop on knee, whisky in hand, and window open just enough so I could breathe the crisp autumn night air and I read the latest online issue of Goblin Fruit.

I am intrigued by the differences between reading from paper and from a screen, not least because I edit an online magazine myself - from a desk surrounded by a wall of books. I bought Goblin Fruit's recent paper offering, 'Demon Lovers and other Difficulties', which features wonderful work by Nicole Korner-Stace, and lingered over it in the bath, but last night I made what was for me a breakthrough in screen reading - I simply sat and savoured the new online issue. I turned off my email and banished my habitual flicking between tabs - looking up writers or references - which can be useful but distracting and I think can transform you into a bit of a lazy reader (you don't have to re-read and interpret anything yourself when the answer is only a few clicks away). And I found that I could become just as absorbed in the words on the screen and the illusions they were creating as I would have if reading from printed paper.

The wonderful content helped of course, it was a pleasure to read (and listen to - many of the poems are also available as MP3s, read by the writers).

I'll just mention a couple of the fairy tale related poems here: My Bed, Made Up with Down Pillows, by Virginia M. Mohlere is a deliciously dark take on The Six Swans story. At the Woodcutter's, by Rosalind Casey is a disturbing rumination on missing children in fairy tales and our own world. And Mari Ness's visceral Hunger is an appropriately chilling look at Little Red Riding Hood for this time of year.

I was also happy to see a poem by Tori Truslow, the lyrical, image rich, Elsa in the Tontlawald. (Tori's beautiful story 'The Siren's Child' appeared in Issue 2 of New Fairy Tales - there's a lovely atmospheric audio version available, read by Avril Brady, which you can listen to on your default media player by clicking here or you can download it by visiting the New Fairy Tales audio collection here).

I've enjoyed many issues of Goblin Fruit before but never in such a fully absorbed way, so I'm not going to give away any more about this issue - you need to find a quiet space and time, switch off your email, retrain those click happy fingers and relish it yourself.