Fairy Tales

Ruth B. Bottigheimer teaches European fairy tales and British children's literature at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. She is the coeditor (with Leela Prasad and Lalita Handoo) of Gender and Story in South India, also published by SUNY Press, and the author of several books, including Fairy Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition.

• Acknowledgments1. Why a New History of Fairy Tales?2. Two Accounts of the Grimms’ Tales: The Folk as Creator, The Book as Source3. The Late Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Layers: Perrault, Lhéritier, and Their Successors4. The Two Inventors of Fairy Tale Tradition: Giambattista Basile (1634–1636) and Giovan Francesco Straparola (1551, 1553)5. A New HistoryNotesWorks CitedIndex

"Bottingheimer's work is as always provocative and interesting." — Journal of American Folklore"The genius of this slender volume is not so much that it provides a totally 'new history,' but rather that it presents not only Bottigheimer's research but also that of John Ellis, Heinz Rölleke, Nancy Canepa, and many others in cogent, persuasive, eminently readable prose … A fascinating study in intertextuality, this book includes a helpful list of the 77 tales discussed, categorized by the author." — CHOICE"Some scholars say that, whether or not one agrees with all of Bottigheimer's conclusions, her work is a useful questioning of popularly held beliefs." — Chronicle Review"This book will forever change the way that scholars and readers view a genre—the literary fairy tale—that remains vital today." — Suzanne Magnanini, author of Fairy-Tale Science: Monstrous Generation in the Tales of Straparola and Basile