I’m very grateful to Penguin Classics for the ARC I received via NetGalley.

Schönwerth’s collection of 500 unknown fairy tales was discovered in 2009 by Erika Eichenseer, herself a storyteller, folk tale scholar, and founder of the Franz Xaver von Schönwerth Society. The tales were gathering dust among his papers in an archive in Regensburg, but finally lived to see the light of day thanks to Eichenseer’s efforts and tireless championing of the fairy tale in general and of Schönwerth in particular. This lovely Penguin Classics translation moves Schönwerth’s world of wonder beyond the borders of the German-speaking world.

Unjustly lesser-known than the Grimm brothers, Perrault, or Andersen, Schönwerth collected his stories in the Bavarian Oberpfalz among people of varied social standing. What is most striking about his method is that he apparently almost completely refrained from interventions after writing down the stories, lending them a raw and authentic quality. The tales even lack an opening formula and instead provide the setting and introduce the characters straight away, e.g. “A wealthy merchant had a son named Karl, who was the silent type.” (The Beautiful Slave Girl); “Three huntsmen went in search of their sister, who had been abducted by a witch and hidden away in the woods” (Three Flowers). By the time we’ve read the first paragraph, so much has happened, and we’re too far gone in the magical world to go back.

Many tales seem unfinished: either the heroes and heroines are frustrated in their quest to find happiness and there is no happy ending, or, more often, we don’t get proper closure or answers to most of our questions. However, the tales have a strange pull; the reader is drawn to turning the page in order to find out what happens next, questions and possible confusion notwithstanding.

Most of the tale types are already familiar to fans of Grimm, Perrault, and others. Enchanted castles, daring quests, envious stepmothers, talking animals, seductive merfolk, magical objects, the number three, and other familiar sights all inhabit these pages. However, both girls and boys are enchanted or need rescue in turn in a rather balanced measure, which delightfully subverts traditional gender roles: often boys are in distress, and girls use their wit and courage to save them.

The pagan or supernatural motifs in some of the tales are also often mixed with Christian symbolism (e.g. a girl prays to keep the mermaids away from her husband, or the Madonna appears in the role of a “fairy” godmother). Some of the tales are myths or legends, or Schönwerth’s takes on very famous stories, such as that of the Pied Piper.

My personal favourites are the so called “tall tales”, which feature the humorous exploits of ordinary people displaying extraordinary wit.

This volume appeals to casual readers and scholars alike. The former will appreciate the uninterrupted sequence of the stories themselves without any footnotes except Schönwerth’s own short remarks in two instances, and the latter will enjoy the commentary of each tale at the end, as well as the careful sources, German titles, and types of each story featured.

While many of the stories are brutal and raw, there is undoubtedly a solid number of them that I would select to read or tell to children, either for the humour or for the moral, but above all because every child and adult could profit from losing themselves in a world of wonder and enchantment.

Most people are familiar with the Brothers Grimm and the fairy tales they collected and made available. Others have heard of Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault and their work. Far fewer have ever heard of Franz Xaver von Schonwerth, although he is a contemporary of the others. He traveled the rural areas of Bavaria in the 1850's, collecting oral versions of fairy tales told by the people from one generation to the next. His work, however, was lost, so he never gained the fame of the other individuals who worked in this field.

Jump ahead to 2009. A researcher, Erika Eichenseer, was astonished to find thirty boxes of von Schonwerth's source material, buried in the archives of a German municipality. There were over five hundred previously unknown fairy tales. Now, Maria Tatar, who chairs the program in mythology and folklore at Harvard, has been hired by Penguin Classics to translate these newly discovered tales. The result is The Turnip Princess.

Readers of these tales will notice several things. First, they tend to be very short stories, starting and ending abruptly in comparison with a Grimm fairy tale. The emphasis is much less on princesses and other female protagonists, with males being the focus of the tale just as often as a female. The tales are dark and violent and have not been rewritten for current sensibilities. Readers interested in fairy tales and the evolution of the oral tradition will find a treasure trove of new material in this anthology.

The Turnip Princess is a wonderful collection of fairy tales. I greatly enjoyed reading this book!

I received an ARC of this novel thanks to the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks for the opportunity.