Overview

In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schonwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schonwerth's work was lost-until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manu-scripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive. Now, for the first time, Schonwerth's lost fairy tales are available in English. Violent, dark, and full of action, and upending the relationship between damsels in distress and their dragon-slaying heroes, these more than seventy stories bring us closer than ever to the unadorned oral tradition in which fairy tales are rooted, revolutionizing our understanding of a hallowed genre.

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9781494514259

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The tales are vigorous, direct, and less artful then those of the Grimms, suggesting greater authenticity, closer to the source. ---Library Journal

Author Information

Erika Eichenseer is the director of the Franz Xaver von Schonwerth Society. She is also a poet and essayist, who has been published in Schonere Heimat, Nordgau-Festschrift, Charivari, and Literatur in Bayern. Erika lives in Germany. Franz Xaver von Schonwerth (1810-1886) had a successful career in law and the Bavarian royal court before devoting himself full-time to cataloging the customs and folktales of his homeland. Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature at Harvard University. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology, and she teaches courses in German Studies, Folklore, and Children's Literature. Maria lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Heather Wilds has appeared in numerous plays on the London stage to great critical acclaim. She has also performed in award-winning films, appeared on TV and in commercials, and works as an audiobook narrator and voice actress.

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