Fairy Tales in the Guardian

Via a Philip Pullman fan site I came across his wonderful retelling of Mossycoat, a Cinderella variant. I’d known of this but hadn’t seen it till now.  I highly recommend it as it is witty, clever, and an all around fun telling of this less-familiar variant.

But hold on, that isn’t all; wondering just why the Guardian published the tale I did a little investigating and discovered that they have been doing an ongoing fairy tale series for some time now.   Articles on various aspects of the tales by some very sharp people as well as a whole lot of retold and translated tales.  Absolutely terrific stuff for those into fairy tales (say, moi). Here are links to a bunch of them:

• Marina Warner on Animals in Fairy Tales
• Hans My Hedgehog translated by Jack Zipes
• Sarah Churchwell on Justice and Punishment in Fairy Tales
• Italo Calvino’s The One-Handed Murderer translated by George Martin
• Alison Lurie on Wisdom and Folly in Fairy Tales
• I. B. Singer’s The Mixed-Up Feet and the Silly Bridegroom translated by Elizabeth Shub
• Adam Phillips on Quests in Fairy Tales
• The Lion and the Hare retold from the Sanskrit by Ramsay Wood
• Sleeping Prince retold by Alison Lurie
• David Barnett on Adult Content in Fairytales
• A. S. Byatt on Love in Fairytales
• Angela Carter’s translation of Perrault’s Cinderella
• Hilary Mantel on Wicked Step-Parents
• Sarah Waters on Angela Carter