Neil Philip is a writer, folklorist and poet. Among his many books are The Cinderella Story, Mythology (with Philip Wilkinson), The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse, The Tale of Sir Gawainand and The Adventures of Odysseus. Neil has contributed to numerous journals, including The Times and Signal: Approaches to Childrens Books, and has also written for stage, screen and radio. His work has won the Aesop Award of the American Folklore Society and the Literary Criticism Book Award of the Childrens Literature Association.

"A treasure-trove of living stories, and enormously fun to read. Enjoy!" "Shivery, creepy, melancholy, funny, fantastic and very real ... Neil Philip's classic collection offers us an overflowing cauldron of marvellous stories.' "Collections of folktales as good as this should be bound in gold and brought out on ceremonial occasions as national treasures." "A profound influence on me and Hookland." "This is the best collection of English folktales since Katharine Briggs's assemblage in four volumes, and perhaps the best ever in a single volume." "A superb anthology of more than one hundred extraordinary tales that reveal the exquisite nature of the English storytelling tradition. This is a dazzling book." "Never was a better time for such a knowing, appreciative volume of our shared tales." "An expertly chosen selection of English folktales that is highly readable, endlessly entertaining, and intellectually enlivened. If by some mysterious goblin's spell I was condemned to give away all the books in my library but one, this is undoubtedly the book I would keep.""Buckle up and prepare for close encounters with ghouls and boggarts, witches and merry-maids, talking cats and roaring bulls." "The generally admitted and admired glories of English literature rest on a much more neglected popular tradition of story-telling. This collection brings that tradition back to life, in a wonderfully accessible form.""A truly beautiful collection of over one hundred English stories . . . collated with true wonder and love for the magic of storytelling."