Tales have fascinated me ever since I was a child. First, it was a child's curiosity and daydream and then later when I became interested in the origins, the etymology, the beginnings, I needed to know the background of the stories. What this book gave me is a look behind the scenes of the stories I grew up on. It provided a context of their making and not only is that process a fascinating one, but it also made these stories much more important, much bigger than they at first seem. It is so amazing to think about how far into the past and wide beyond any border the tales stretch and this book really encircled that phenomenon and highlighted its steadiness. The author really did a good job in understanding and then presenting the time and space in which the tales developed, what were the initiators, what made them pique people's interest so much and then spread across the world. He did really well in presenting how they changed during time and how they took on the form they have today. He did so by really getting familiar with the social, cultural and historical elements that surrounded them and that's why this book is so amazing to me. He talked about the circulation of the stories spinning us into their contexts. He used a language that is as magical as any tale he talked about - and that is a language that is simple, kind and caring, passionate about showing the preciousness and importance of the tales. Before I started reading this book, I thought it would be more of a theoretical analysis and that's how I approached it, but as I reached the last page, I felt exactly how I felt when I was little, when the tale would reach its ending. Like I'm leaving another magical story behind.

Interesting and compelling take on fairy tales - I didn't know you could trace fairy tales that accurately and that far back. A bit of an eye opener for me. I recommend to anyone with a fascination with fairy tales.

Fairy tales (and folk tales) have always fascinated me, so I was excited to read The Fairy Tellers. Jubber takes an in-depth look into the lives of select storytellers which was interesting at times, dull at others, and so-so most of the time. It couldn't make up its mind if the story it wanted to present was academic or conversational, so it settled on an awkward combination of both. Overall, this was more of a miss than a hit for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Nicholas Brealey Publishing for the opportunity to read an advance reading copy.

To be completely honest, this was both a struggle and an easy read. There were many moments where I breezed through the text fascinated by the origin of some of our most well known fairy tales. Then, there were other moments where it was a slog and I struggled to keep my eyes open.

Strengths: interesting topic with unexpected origins. This is what keeps you going.

Weakness: the writing style is tangential and overly wordy at times. Not always though.

A fascinating look at the origins of the stories we know and love, The Fairy Tellers is a deep dive into the life and times of the writers who started stories that have survived the ages.
From beauty and the beast to Aladdin, Jubber takes a long and colourful look at the societal and political aspects that shape people, the stories that they create and how the stories themselves evolve and contour throughout time.
A fascinating read for aficionados of the subject.

The concept behind Fairy Tellers was such an interesting one for me, which was why I requested it. I wasn't disappointed at all as I read the book — it was well-researched and the writing was engaging, not a snoozefest at all. However, there was the tendency to drone on and on, even to the tiniest aspects of a fairy-teller's life, etc. It does show how passionate the author is of the subject. If you're ever interested in finding out more about fairy tales and the stories and people behind them, I definitely recommend that you pick this book up.

This book is fantastic and beautiful.

The sheer details involved in this novel are marvelous and something I would like to share with others. Learning more about the origin and the story of the people behind the stories we all cherish is riveting and enthralling. I truly cannot wait for a copy of this book.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for a copy of this book!

The Fairy Tellers was an interesting and enjoyable read. I had heard of most of the writers mentioned, but I didn't know a lot about the background of some of them, so it was fascinating to discover a bit about their lives and how they came to write/collect their stories. The tales of these authors are told in an engaging manner, with summaries of some of their key stories interspersed between the chapters. There is also a useful bibliography if you wish to read on. This is a book sure to appeal to fans of fairytales. It gets a solid 4 stars from me.

I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I was unable to read this book as It wasn't possible to enlarge the print on my mobile.

What a pity.

Good luck with the book..

After recently reading a series of novels exploring the different retellings of popular fairytales around the world, I enjoyed reading Jubber’s work focusing on some of the lesser known fairy tellers that have had an impact on the canon of the genre. The writing was enjoyable and the narrative tone was engaging. An interesting concept which is well executed. I’m not usually a fan of non-fiction works, but this read in a way that immersed the reader in these writers’ worlds.

The formatting on kindle did leave a little to be desired though…

Very enjoyable and informative. We've all heard of The Brothers Grimm, but so many others are behind fairy tales. If you are interested in the background, this book is for you. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book

Making the point early in The Fairy Tellers that many of the tales best known to us in the West can trace their roots back to the Bronze Age, travel writer Nicholas Jubber endeavoured to discover why so many of those tales seem to now be “time-locked inside a bubble of medieval Europe”. As Jubber travelled through France and Germany, India and Syria, Russia and Denmark — seeking out the former homes of both famous and lesser known fairy tellers and interviewing local literary experts — he was surprised to learn how many fairy tale themes and details seemed to repeat across time and cultures, and perhaps less surprised to discover that each teller would imprint the old stories with details from their own lives. As it turns out, these fairy tales, in the forms we know them today, have been “time-locked” thanks to those who had access to publication (generally: white European men), but they weren’t always the tellers of the tales, and Jubber does a genuine service to bring the uncredited fairy tellers themselves (generally: women and non-Europeans) out of the shadows. This book contains many shortened versions of fairy tales, the biographies of their tellers and collectors, and vivid geographical writing from Jubber’s travels; and while that’s a lot to pack into one volume, I found it all very interesting — perhaps lacking in insight and analysis, but Jubber has collected so much of interest here that I’m rounding up to four stars.

What a creative and well-written look into the creators of various fairy tales. Not only does the author cover the big ones like the Brothers Grimm, he covers lesser known creators as well. I really enjoyed the look into the tellers ' backgrounds, but also what was going on at the time and place when they were writing the fairy tales. Very, very interesting, perfect for anyone who likes to know the history of our modern fairy tales.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers John Murray and Smith Publicity for an advanced copy of this book on fairy-tales.

Once upon a time, when the work of the day was done, dinner finished and the fire warm and bright, then would be the time for stories. Tales told by people around earlier fires, told by people around earlier fires, as long as people had been gathering around fires. Tales of history, or tales of explanation, even of morals, right, wrong and what happens to the indifferent. These tales had changed over time, each teller adding their own bias, or own little bit of knowledge, or if they were showy maybe a bit of acting to get attention, depending on the audience and a few coins. There have been many books about the meaning of fairy-tales, but few on the creators, compilers and annotators themselves. Nicholas Jubber in his book The Fairy Tellers: A Journey Into the Secret History of Fairy Tales, shares tales of these men and women who created or shared these stories that are still being told or mined for popular culture today.

Jubber starts with an explanation and personal history of fairy-tales sharing what they meant to him and what sparked his interest in the subject. From there the book travels from region to region highlighting stories and creators from North Africa to Siberia, with biographical sketches and tales from each region. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen are profiled, but there are a lot of others who are not as well known, but are as important such as the Syrian Hanna Diyab and Doretha Wilde who was married to Wilhelm Grimm and was not just an assistant, but a source of many tales herself. The stories chosen to introduce the region and creators are both familiar and new, as these are the pre-Disney stories where bad things happened to both good and bad characters. There is a lot more blood than you expect.

The writing is very good and well researched and sourced. Nicholas Jubber is a travel writer, so his descriptions of the regions and the environment are full of little things that make them stand out far more, and give a better sense to why a certain story and tale could carry such weight. The tales and the history mix well, and never get in the way of the narrative, which is about fairy-tales and their influences. I learned quite a bit from reading, with every page full of facts and interesting observations about creating and who tales adapt over time. The book flows well and never seems like a lecture, which can sometimes happen in studies about literature.

This book has a lot to offer. For students of literature, you can trace stories that have been very important to writing and art for hundreds of years, tracing influences, and what creators had to put up with. Creative types might take inspiration from the tales and help them create their own art, or maybe another adaptation of a classic tale, brought to today, with today's sensibilities and politics. A very enjoyable, well done and researched and even better fascinating book that I can't recommend enough.

My 2022 goal was to read more nonfiction and what a brilliant way to do so. This was so well done - as someone who spends all their time reading getting to reed about the stories I constantly just reread different versions of was so lovely.

This was all at once comforting , incredibly insightful and brilliantly smart.

I can’t wait to grab my own hard copy when the time comes !

There are many books analysing fairy tales, but not many about the people who tell them. Not simply those that collect and classify them like the Grimms or Perrault, but the <i>tellers</i> of original tales, who as the title signals, are the subject of this book.

The "fairy tellers" that travel writer Nicholas Jubber chose to showcase are, with the exception of Hans Christian Andersen, either little known save by fairy tale enthusiasts or completely unknown. Which can be surprising given how immensely popular the tales they told are. Everyone knows "Beauty and the Beast," and if asked they'll probably refer to Disney as the creators, an equivocal impression the company itself promotes by omitting the name of the original teller from the credits, but how many can tell the real creator's name? Probably fans of the tale, and even amongst them, not everyone guesses it right because the "reteller" that abridged it is more famous than the actual first teller: Madame de Villeneuve.

To remedy this omission as well as shed light on the circumstances and cultural as well as historical context that led to the creation of famous fairy tales whose authors are generally left in the shadows, Jubber chose six examples, some more interesting than others, some of which had themselves a fairy tale-like life and others not so much; some of the tellers' lives are tragic, and others are rather ordinary, but none of them suffered from a dulled imagination. The first teller is Giambattista Basile, a Neapolitan soldier-for-hire that could've walked out from a Dumas novel, who wrote"The Tale of Tales," one of the very first collections of literary fairy tales (as opposed to folktales) to exist and that contains predecessors to tales that Perrault and the Grimms would make famous, such as Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty. Basile left his life as an adventurer and set down to writing, but although he wasn't successful in his lifetime, his tales are still popular and still published, although most readers likely don't know they are his.

The second is a name that will be completely unknown to readers: Hanna Dyab, a Syrian Christian of the Maronite persuasion, who is behind Aladdin and Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves. This was probably the most surprising biography for me, because I had always assumed the tales he authored were from "The Thousand and One Nights." Being rather trusting, poor Dyab was manipulated by self-serving French scholars that lured him to Louis XIV's court with promises of fame and social position, where he ultimately ended up like an exotic pet for the court nobles. His is one of the most infuriating stories here, for how he was taken advantage of and robbed of his due as creator of now famous tales, but his life itself was fortunately not tragic despite these setbacks.

The third teller is Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, the inventor of "Beauty and the Beast." What, did you think it was Beaumont? No, not at all. Beaumont merely abridged it and made it popular when it got translated into English just in time for the fairy tale craze that took place at the time. In the process, Beaumont also altered the tale, sanitised it for young girls, and slapped a moralistic veneer into it that is the reason so many nowadays think, mistakenly I should add, that the tale is about accepting arranged marriages and that there's Stockholm Syndrome undertones. The original author, however, never intended it as such, and once you learn about her own life, her miserable marriage, and her enterprising career as a writer at a time women's writing was still sneered at and attacked in spite of the valiant efforts of the salonnières. She was successful during her life too, perhaps not as wildly so as her male contemporaries, but successful enough that her fairy tale was both criticised and beloved by contemporary readers. It sure struck a chord, and keeps doing so.

Fourth comes Dortchen Wild, known in history only as the wife of the younger Grimm, Wilhelm. But she was more than just a loving wife and caring sister-in-law to the Grimms: she was also one of their sources, arguably the most important one as it's speculated up to twenty of their tales came from her. Dortchen's is one of the ordinary village life ones, somewhat spiced up with the Napoleonic Wars, and very little is known about her personally, which has led to much speculation that Jubber picks up rather uncritically at times. Anyway, if you're a fan of Hänsel & Gretel, you have Frau Grimm to thank for it, as this tale is one that has the strongest support for her as the author, although some of the reasons why made me smile: the house made of sweets and cake. So very German!

The fifth teller reads like a Dostoevsky stereotype so much that I had to check other sources to make sure Ivan Khudiakov wasn't a character from old Fyodor Mikhailovich's classics. No, Khudiakov was 100% real, poor chap, but you can't be blamed for thinking otherwise. His is the most tragic, but also amusing at times, of all the lives of fairy storytellers accounted for here, and for me personally the most interesting alongside Villeneuve's. Everyone has heard from Baba Yaga these days thanks to the Alexander Afanasyev anthology of Russian tales and other Russophile folklorists that brought them to the West, but the man responsible for many of the popular Baba Yaga tales has been tossed into the dustbin of history, a totally undeserved fate. I think that, of all the tellers, Khudiakov is the one that deserves to be rescued the most from oblivion by having his tales reprinted under his own name. His own life could make for a good novel, too.

The penultimate teller is a Brahmin named Somadeva, from Kashmir, who beat the rest of the tellers here in number of tales to his name, all of which he published in a collection entitled "The Ocean of Story." He is another with an interesting life, him having to become a sort of male Scheherezade for his neurotic queen, sans the threat of beheading by the end of the night, thank goodness. Unfortunately, very little to nothing is known about him, so again this section crams in mostly cultural context plus a sprinkling of speculation.

And the last teller doesn't even need an introduction: Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, the world's most famous fairy teller. Of them all, he's the most psychologically open and easier to grasp thanks to the diaries and letters he left. But also the most curiously elusive, as it's very easy to project all sorts of pop psychodiagnoses onto him, from being asexual to being gay to autistic. His tales are also quite easy to misinterpret, by adults most of all because children do get them easily. As they should, because Andersen was a pioneer of telling tales <i>to children</i>, speaking to them directly, which other tellers before and after couldn't achieve.

Some will probably object to the selection of these seven storytellers and come up with names to include instead, but not me. I think it's a fine selection that meets its goals. This isn't about who had the most interesting life, because there are other tellers that had soap opera lives (d'Aulnoy and de La Force come to mind) and yet other tellers have such dull lives they'd send you to sleep. This is about contributions of original fairy tales that made an impact and are still told and retold today, and as such this is a great resource for fairy tale lovers. Of course, it does have some burps, like that Napoleon was diminutive (he wasn't) or that Marina Warner dismissed Villeneuve (she didn't, what she said isn't what the author interprets it as), and taking a novelist's discredited speculation at face value. I'm speaking here of Kate Forsyth's novel on Dortchen Wild, which is pure fiction coming from someone who is neither a folklorist nor a fairy tale academic, and calling it "beautiful" without taking its errors into account as well as diminishing the seriousness of Forsyth's premise as merely parental abuse (it was more than that when you read it closely), is a notable mistake.

Loved this look into Fairy tellers and looking past the fairy tales to who created them and their sources. Basically looking at the history of the tales and more importantly the tellers.

“The Fairy Tellers” is not a complete history of the classic fairy tales. Author Nicholas Jubber makes this plain as could be at the very beginning, and states his intent to only focus on several specific women and men who have written (or at least recorded and put their personal spin) on the first documented versions of some of the most well known stories from the genre out there. However, even with all that being said, it definitely feels as comprehensive as could possibly be. The scope of detail included here is impressive, to say the least. For each individual (or group, in the case of the Brothers Grimm), besides their biographies Jubber also includes abundant information on the cities and regions that helped shape them, the greater relevant historical forces and trends at play, and any other relevant influences that he could possibly find.

I never thought I’d be able to know so much about some of the tales I’ve known for as long as I’ve lived, or get to know several brand new figures and their contributions so deeply. “The Fairy Tellers” is genuinely one of the most fun and fascinating nonfiction rides that I’ve had the pleasure of taking in a good while.