The Fairy Tellers is about how fairy tales originated and the connections between east and west when it comes to fairy tales. It was interesting to read the fairy tales alongside the academic research about the fairy tale. A must read by fair tale lovers who like to delve deeper.

I found it hard to connect with the author's style. While I do appreciate a detailed narration, this one was just too detailed and I felt lost all the time.

As a lover of fairytales, I found this book a delight to read. This book covers many fairytales that I hav never heard of from other cultures. Thus, it was interesting to glimpse many different cultures through folklore. Therefore, I recommend this for anyone who loves fairytales!

A beautifully written book. Really enjoyed reading this. Thanks to publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read.

What a book! As an folklorist and someone who has loved the non-Disneyfied fairy tales for a long time, I really enjoyed The Fairy Tellers. Most of the information was not new to me, only due to my academic background but I love now having a book that I can point to for people who want to read more about fairy tale history and don't necessarily want to slog into annals of academic libraries. I especially loved how Jubber did not ignore the complicated history between European or Western folk tales and fairy tales and those from the "East." That dissemination and transference is incredibly important to the stories we know and love today. I also appreciated that Jubber dug into how sanitized some of these stories have become based on changing historical attitudes around childhood and the idea of "what is appropriate." This is definitely a book that will be in my collection and one I will pass on to others as well.

An excellently written look at the often unsung tellers behind well-known and sometimes lesser-known fairytales. Jubber shows how the oral tradition is and was extremely important to these tales, but that they have also been shaped by particular individuals from a variety of cultures. The tone is more one of personal discovery than of academic investigation, which makes it a smooth and pleasurable read, although sometimes it would have been good to have more detailed references. This book provides plenty of inspiration for further reading and I think it is one I will come back to over the years.

This book was more academic than I expected but I very much enjoyed learning the provenance of some famous fairy tales.

Fairy tales are beloved all over the world, by children and adults alike. They continue to be turned into blockbuster films, but they also continued to be told in the dark. I have adored fairy tales since I was a child but, being me, I always wanted to know more about them and their origin. And this is how I encountered The Fairy Tellers, a book full of tales that celebrates the act of telling. Thanks to Nicholas Brealey and NetGalley, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Fairy tales were my bread and butter as a child. My mother had a collection of books with fairy tales from all over the world. The German fairy tales, as written down by the Grimm Brothers formed the backbone of my education, but it was enriched by fairy tales from Africa, Asia, and North America. It started a life-long obsession with the stories, which did much to inspire my love for medieval literature. But where do these stories come from? Why are they immediately recognisable and yet so hard to define? Where did fairy tales begin? These are the driving questions behind Nicholas Jubber's journey in The Fairy Tellers as well and I truly couldn't have asked for a better guide.

The Fairy Tellers tells the tale of six of the most influential people in the history of fairy tales, some well-known, others shamefully forgotten or actively hushed away. While not chronological, the journey through The Fairy Tales feels natural. First is Giambattista Basile, known for The Tale of Tales, or Lo Cunto de li Cunti. Nicholas Jubber brings to live the Neapolitan culture in the way Basile did himself in his tales. Basile wrote the first known version of tales which came to echo throughout countless childhoods, from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty, yet also beautiful oddities like The Flea with its spunky princess. Next is the tale of Youhenna (or Hanna) Diab, a man from the souks of Aleppo who, through countless adventures, finds himself in Paris during its obsession with A Thousand and One Nights, telling the tales of Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin to Antione Galland, who promptly took credit. His tales, specifically Aladdin, are so well known, and yet the man himself is a cypher. His autobiography was discovered in the Vatican Library, resurrecting him from history, and Jubber does his tale justice in The Fairy Tellers. The third teller is also from Paris, namely Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, whose fall from nobility to poverty inspired her many heroines, but specifically Belle in Beauty and the Beast. While the "beast-groom" story was already popular amongst the story-tellers of Paris, de Villeneuve wrote the tale which introduced the key elements we still know today, from the rose to the singing wardrobe. And she got exactly no credit for it for a very long time.

Rather than focus on the Brothers Grimm entirely, Jubber dedicates his fourth part to Dortchen Wild, one of the young women who told them tales, most famously Hans and Gretel and Rumpelstilskin. Tracking her influence on the brothers, from the stories she told them to her marriage to Wilhelm, Jubber shines a light on a forgotten woman. From here we move further afield, to Ivan Khudiakov's rollercoaster of a life. Brilliant from childhood, he published his first collection of Russian fairy tales before the age of 22, but that's only where the rollercoaster starts. Khudiakov actually, unlike the Brothers Grimm, traveled through the land collecting and transcribing tales from "the common folk" and for him these tales were a crucial part of a potential revolution. This drive did not end well for him. From revolutionary Russia part 6 hops to medieval India and Somadeva's The Ocean of the Stream of Stories, or Kathasaritsagara. A beautiful collection that combines storytelling with mythology and religion, it is a major work by a mostly mysterious man. Not much is known about Somadeva, but Jubber brilliantly evokes Kashmir for the reader, allowing us to appreciate what an impact storytelling could have had. The Fairy Tellers ends with perhaps the most famous teller, Hans Christian Andersen. While he does not need to be rescued from obscurity, his life does demonstrate the saving grace of story telling like no other. Constantly searching for recognition and love, Andersen's stories create an entire world in which many of us have found a home.

The Fairy Tellers ends with a rousing ode to fairy tales, with a strong emphasis on their beauty but also their grace. While fairy tales are hard to define, they share the trait of having to be told. A written fairy tale is different to one that is told, whether actively by a parent to a child or passively through a framing device. They must somehow forge a connection between two people, through the shared intimacy of a shared story. Nicholas Jubber shares his journey with us, showing us what he saw in Aleppo before it was bombed, how he commisserated with the abused statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, and how Naples impressed him. The reader gets to travel with him and share in the stories he finds. The Fairy Tellers is almost like a fairy tale in that sense itself, full with a sense of magic and timelessness, and yet just odd enough here and there that you can't help but cock your head. His research and skill saves some of the above tellers from obscurity, at least for me, and made them as dear to me as the fairy tales they told themselves. And that is truly what a good story is meant to do, create a connection.

The Fairy Tellers is a beautiful journey into the history of the telling of tales. Told with a genuine personal touch, Jubber's book is a must-read for any fairy tale lover like myself!

I love fairy tales and was interested in learning the roots for them, which this book delivered. I found it to be perhaps a little too long-winded in some areas, particularly the initial stages of the book, but found it solid and comprehensible despite this.

Who first told the story “Cinderella”? What are the cultural origins of “Sleeping Beauty”? What was the political landscape when the stories about Baba Yaga were composed? How closely does the modern “Beauty and the Beast” resemble the classic “Cupid and Psyche”? And which once popular stories have been lost, or which stories were barely known in the past, but are now considered to be classics?

In his wide-ranging book, Jubber crosses centuries and continents, traveling from the dusty markets of late Medieval Syria to the gilded halls of Versailles, from the bitterly cold winters of Saint Petersburg to the dense green forests of central Germany. Along the way, he tackles social collapse and renewal, political upheaval, ethnic strife, religious division, gender construction and reconstruction, agrarianism versus industrialization, and much much more. It is a tour de force, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

I have been a life-long fan of fairy tales. I was raised on a steady diet of Grimm and Perrault, which turned into a passion for writing my own versions of classic, as well as original, fairy tales. Only recently, however, have I taken an interest in the sources of the fairy tales I love. I knew the names d’Aulnoy and Marie de France and Basile and Andersen — but I knew there had to be more names, more authors and collectors and editors. And I learned their stories in Jubber’s The Fairy Tellers.

Take Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. In 18th century France, she suffered through a terrible marriage, was widowed by age twenty-six, and had to sell off her inherited estate bit by bit to settle her deceased husband’s debts. Nearly penniless, she moved to Paris where she attracted the attention of playwright and literary censor, Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon, taking shelter in his terrible, leaky, animal-infested apartment. It was here that she wrote numerous fairy tales, including her most famous: “Beauty and the Beast.” Like so many fairy tales, it drew upon her life experiences — and oh so subtly attacked the status quo of the day, including the treatment of women and marital customs.

Another example: Ivan Khudiakov. Only eighteen years of age, he tramped through the villages of Russia, sitting down in huts and around campfires to collect the stories of the traditional skomorokhi. His Great Russian Fairy Tales was the first such collection, ever. But Khudiakov was a socialist, a political radical seen as a threat by the government. His fairy tales (the government censors argued) mocked the Tsar and the Orthodox Church, and undermined the social hierarchy. Khudiakov (most shockingly) even published a cheap manual, A Tutorial for Beginners to Learn to Read and Write, aimed at educating the illiterate serf class.

Fairy tales are not just fairy tales. They never have been. They are about us: our fears and desires; the societies we live in and how we want to change them; ideas about justice and punishment; the relationships between the sexes and the relationship between humanity and the natural world; and so much more. There is a reason that so many of these stories had to be told in secret, or disguised as children’s entertainment; there is a reason that so many of their authors were harassed, imprisoned, or even executed by the Powers That Be.

The Fairy Tellers by Jubber is a excellent dive into the history of modern fairy tales, a history which is still being told as new sources are discovered. Highly recommended to lovers of fairy tales everywhere, as well as fans of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales by Tatar; Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales by Forrester; and The Writing of the Gods by Dolnick.

A wonderfully compelling exploration of fairy tales, their origins, the cultures that gave birth to them, the collectors who collected them, their spread around the world and their continuing appeal. Meticulously researched, comprehensive and detailed, wide-ranging in time and place, it all makes for some compelling reading. The inclusion of a few of the most well-known tales adds to what is already a very pleasurable reading experience. The style is accessible – even humorous a times - and never gets bogged down in scholarship, although the scholarship is obviously there. Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and all for an ARC copy in return for an honest review.
Unfortunately, this wasn't for me. Totally my misunderstanding, I thought this would be more about the origins of Fairytales, how they developed, etc but it is specifically about the people who told the stories, hence the title. This wasn't as interesting to me personally.

This is definitely one of the more unique nonfiction books I've read. I've seen books on fairy tales and their origins but never such an in-depth analysis into the livelihoods of those who wrote or popularised them. Nicholas Jubber, in his extensively descriptive writing, brings to life the very streets, woods, and deserts these people would have walked on while their heads were up in the clouds. Despite being a little over 300 pages this took me a while to get through because the writing is a bit complex but once you get past that, the eccentricities, and the tumultuous lives of these raconteurs, will keep you well entertained.

So many of them had tragic lives, some naive enough to be manipulated by others and their contributions forgotten. Some of them lived ordinary lives, their names lost and replaced by corporations like Disney. People remember the Grimm brothers but rarely recognize the name Dortchen Wild who was the pioneer responsible for so many of their tales.
It makes sense that many of these popular tales originally don't have happy endings reflecting the bleakness of olden times both morally & economically and yet they contain a sense of hope and perseverance. I remember reading my copy of the little mermaid where she finds out the prince loves another and falls into the sea and dies in order to break the sea witch's curse but in the process gains a soul.

Jubber also importantly points out the misogyny of the era that stains some of these tales even as these chroniclers include the poverty and politics in their stories. Despite that, Jubber doesn't fail to bring to attention the ingenuity and resilience of women of those times even if they don't get the hero's treatment.

My only gripe though is that this is heavily eurocentric with a sprinkle of the Indian Subcontinent and middle east. what about the Native American storytellers, the Asian and African. If the argument is that these would be seen as religious mythology and not fairytales then the inclusion of the Indian section is an example of fairytales inspired by religious motifs. The argument also that their lives would have been too uninteresting seems weak.

Nevertheless, this is still a heavily well-researched book with a good collection of characters whose lives' multifaceted and nuanced examination makes for a fascinating and enlightening read.

There are the names you know. Brothers Grimm. Andersen. And then so many you don’t. So many that have been lost amid the sands of time. And yet their work – the stories that brought into the world – live on, have done so for centuries, one reiteration after another, one adaptation after the next. They are some of our most beloved stories of all – the fairy tales.
We know the modern versions, mostly Disneyfied, cleaned-up for the public at large. And yet, fairy tales are meant to be dark. Tragic. Sad. They were written as cautionary tales. Morality instructionals. But made entertaining, with witches and magic.
Those are the fairy tales I know and love. And their origins go back centuries ago, when cross the globe, the intrepid creators and collectors created (original material) and collected (and adapted existing folklore) to produce books of stories that would beguile the world’s collective imagination.
And so, from Italy to Siberia, from India to Scandinavia, this book will take you on an adventure to track down those unfairly forgotten fairy tellers and honor their talents, for those writers deserve to be known. For their perseverance, for their passion, for their creativity, imagination, for the way they saw the world and the legacy they left behind.
These might not have been the happiest of individuals, who faced great many challenges in their personal and professional lives, but they were never deterred. They intended to tell fairy tales and they did. And the readers of the following centuries have enjoyed them since. Everywhere a written word has reached.
Now that’s legacy.
So yes, a resounding yes, this book is great. Written by a fairy tale lover for fairy tale lovers, the author’s passion for these stories really comes through. The writing is fun and engaging. This book is a travelogue, a biography collection, a literary study all in one. It draws fascinating parallels between different stories from different cultures and times and shows their meaning within the sociocultural context of their day. And more importantly, it shines the spotlight on the people who so very much deserve it, so that their names may live on along with their magical stories. A great read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: https://www.ManOfLaBook.com

The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales by Nicholas Jubber is a history book about the stories we all loved as children and the people who wrote them. Mr. Jubber is a writer and traveler (the job I hoped for).

The history of fairy tales cannot be anything but fascinating. As always, however, history is almost as fascinating, if not more, than fiction.

In The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales author Nicholas Jubber delves into the fascinating stories behind the stories we all grew up with. From famous writers to those that inspired them, to some who inspired us but we don’t even know their names.

There were many aspects of this book which I never realized, from the social commentary about 16th Century France of Beauty and the Beast (by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve) to the celebrity of Hans Christian Andersen during his lifetime. Somadeva, a Brahim, beats them all with the number of tales to his name when he published The Ocean of Story.

I enjoyed reading about the way Giambattista Basile, a character who is bigger than life in his own right, captured the life, and speech, of Napoly (Naples) in Tale of Tales, to the way Hanna Dyab brought the Thousand and One Nights tales from Aleppo, Syria, to France for posterity. Unfortunately, Dyab was taken advantage of by French scholars and robbed of his place in popular history.

As in any book about fairy tales, The Grimm Brothers also make an appearance. However, the author wrote about Wilhelm Grimm’s wife, Dortchen Wild, a loving, and caring wife who could spin a tale with the best of them. It is thought that she contributed 20 or so tales to their collection.

The most fascinating character is Ivan Khudiakov, a poor man right out of classic Russian literature. Ivan Khudiakov popularized the Baba Yaga stories and ended up with a fate that no one deserves, especially not some poor schmo spinning stories. But stories are what regimes are afraid of.

This is a fine book and a great choice of authors. I never realized the contribution of most of these authors to the world, as well as the significance behind their stories.

This is a very interesting and comprehensive read about the origin of fairy tales and those who collected and retold them.

Jubber looks at the multifaceted origins of some of the most well known fairy tales and the people and cultures that created them.

This book has a primary focus on the people who collected and popularised the stories - the Fairy Tellers.

I learnt a lot about the history and significance of stories I've known all my life but never really thought to wonder on how they came about and why they've been so enduring.

This book would be best suited to someone with a particular interest in folklore as opposed to the casual reader.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As a child I remember sitting in delighted horror as my older cousin spun scary stories that terrified my young self. When I came to truly love fairy tales (at a rather older age than these stories typically catch their audiences nowadays), I remembered those shivery story sessions and wondered what it would have been like to have heard the first telling of "Beauty and the Beast" or "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." Even after doing some of my graduate work on fairy tales I still assumed that it was as impossible to know who was the first person to tell such stories as it was to know who first looked at a horse and decided it would be a good thing to sit upon. Fairy tales have so many versions and have spread through so many firesides that tracing them back to the start seemed an impossible quest in my eyes.

Well Nicholas Jubber rises to that quest in "The Fairy Tellers." This is a book not just about people who recorded fairy tales but also those who told them and even those who dreamed up these enduring stories. The lives of seven people who wrote, told, and collected fairy tales come to life in these pages. Some of these people will be familiar or will be associated with people who are familiar. For example, many will know that the Grimm brothers collected and published fairy tales, but few will know the names of just who they heard these tales from. In fact it was Wilhelm Grimm's wife Dortchen Wild who recounted to the brothers some of their most beloved tales.

One of the first things that won me over to this book was the wonderful voice that comes through in Nicholas Jubber's writing. The author spins us through a variety of cultures, places, times, and people in a beautifully conversational way that brings them all to life. As someone who has indeed read many books (both scholarly and popular) devoted to fairy tales I am well familiar with the fact that their magical premise does not always lead to magical writing. The author's past experience as a travel writer clearly comes through in his ability to capture and transport the reader.

It is easy to think that the realm of fairy has been thoroughly explored an there is no new ground to tread. But part of the magic of this book is that it not only opens up just how much is not common knowledge, but how much is still being discovered and explored. One of my very favorite sections covered the life of Syrian Christian Hanna Dyab who gave us some of the most well-known tales now associated with The Arabian Nights. It was not until the publication of his autobiography in 2015 that it became apparent just how much Antione Galland's version of "One Thousand and One Nights" owes to Dyab.

I think that the beautiful tone and fascinating details in this book will hold the attention of anyone who is interested in fairy tales. I believe it also deserves a place on the shelves of anyone who appreciates the rediscovery and elevation of voices that may have been obscured by history. Do be aware that while this book does have a few brief stories associated with the people profiled, it is not primarily a collection of folktales. It does include a bibliography of works that will keep readers busy for a long time should they choose to explore more!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Smith Publicity for a copy of this work in exchange for my honest review.

If you've ever wondered about the people behind popular fairy tales, this is definitely the book for you.

"Over the course of my trail, I tried to work out what makes a 'fairy tale'. An eventyr, 'adventure', a Märchen, a 'little tale', hikayah al-khayaliyeh, a 'story of the imagination'."

It's been a while since I read non-fiction, so it took a few chapters for my brain to readjust to facts over fiction. It helped that there are summaries of fairy tales interspersed between chapters, and, to be honest, these were probably my favourite parts.

"The reason these stories still speak to us is because they were set down by people who knew poverty and wealth, love and hate, fear and excitement, just as we do today; people who shared in the humus of human life."

Jubber is unafraid and thankfully unwilling to shy away from the misogyny, racism, and prejudice in many of these original stories. It's interesting to see how these collectors and writers of fairy tales come from a wide range of backgrounds. I went into The Fairy Tellers aware of the obvious - Giambattista Basile, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Anderson, but I was very excited to learn about some female fairy tellers. Namely, Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, for who 'Beauty and the Beast' could almost be considered autobiographical, Baroness d'Aulnoy, who had a circle of ladies competing in fairy telling competitions when she wasn't busy being a spy, and Dortchen Wild who provided the Brothers Grimm with at least a dozen of their collected fairy tales and ended up married to Wilhelm Grimm. Of course, it's never surprising when men in history overshadow women, but it's nice to have the record set straight.

"One of the less palatable lessons of traditional fairy tales is that curiosity (especially in young women) is often answered with punishment rather than reward. But if you've got the itch, you're going to find it awfully hard to stop scratching."

"Giambattista builds his stories around women fighting with all the resources at their disposal. For all their flaws, and for all the platitudes of conventional misogyny sprinkled throughout the book, they are rarely silent or inactive."

It was also nice to move to different, somewhat unexpected parts of the world to learn more about the men behind some famous fairy tales. Hanna Dyab, a Syrian writer, brings us Aladdin and Ali Baba, Ivan Khudiakov is considered a Russian revolutionary who popularised Baba Yaga, and Somadeva, a prolific poet from India whose book was "twice as long as the Odyssey and the Iliad combined - roughly the length of The Lord of the Rings."

"Sure, there are princes and princesses, but only occasionally: Hanna shows that anybody can drive a story. The way is led by rope makers and robbers, slaves and street kids, tea sellers and tree fellers."

It was interesting to see how fairy tales moved in and out of fashion throughout time and to be able to follow their journey and evolution to the stories we know so well today.

"Stories flowed along the routes of caravans and ships, burrowing into their new host societies, adapting to local conditions, reshaped by new storytellers who added their own spin on them and made them their own."

Besides, where else can you read about someone being "murdered by a volcano"?

This book includes a lot of unique information. Unfortunately, I was not drawn in as much as I hoped I would be.

I was initially drawn to The Fairy Tellers by its striking cover, and as someone who has always loved fairy tales since childhood the idea of learning more about their origins and the people who helped to make them popular and safeguard them for future generations certainly appealed to me. In this book Nicholas Jubber takes the reader back in time and around the world to explore not just the familiar names like Perrault, Grimm and Andersen, but those from other traditions like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab or Somadeva who chronicled the stories of the Kashmir region. The writing style is conversational and I appreciated the way that the author incorporated several well known and a few lesser known stories into the book to introduce the storytellers. I also really appreciated that he wrote about the women who also collected and told these tales, most notably Dorothea Wild, wife of Wilhelmm Grimm and Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve who is responsible for the story of Beauty and the Beast that is so popular today that it has inspired multiple retellings and new iterations.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.