Fairy Tales:
A Guide to Resources on the Web

by William Barker

This page is an introduction to some of the resources currently available for fairy tales and related short narrative forms. I have prepared this to go with English 4209, a course at Dalhousie University on fairy tales. There is a lot more that could go on here, but this is a start.

Texts

Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts
This is an amazing resource, compiled by D.L. Ashliman now retired from the Department of German Languages and Literatures of the University of Pittsburgh. It brings together multiple literary and oral-recorded variants of tales under the Aarne-Thompson numbers.

Grimms' Fairy Tales
A text of the 1884 Margaret Hunt translation prepared by a group of students at Memorial University of Newfoundland. On his folklore site D.L. Ashliman gives a full listing of the tales with Aarne-Thompson numbers. Ashliman also provides a useful reference page for the Grimms. He appears to be translating the tales afresh. The German texts appear at Gutenberg.de. There is a handy bilingual teaching edition of a small number of stories on a site maintained by Robert Godwin-Jones at Virginia Commonwealth University. The Edgar Taylor translation of 1812 is found in a text by Gutenberg. A full set of tales, using a widely circulated but unattributed translation, but accompanied by a German text in parallel, is found at Northvegr, the work having been done by Yves Kodratoff.

Charles Perrault's Mother Goose Tales
A bit of background is found at D.L. Ashliman's site for Folk and Fairy Tales (also listed below). The tales are given in French on the site "à Lyon".

Hans Christian Andersen's Tales and Stories
Contains a list, with most in translation, of all of the stories. Translation is by H.P. Paull, 1872.

Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
The Gutenberg texts of the famous colour series assembled by Andrew Lang (1844-1912), a notable folkore scholar in his time. Attractively assembled by Laura Gibbs.

The Cinderella Project
Twelve literary variants of the Cinderella story, organized by Michael N. Salda with students from the University of Southern Mississippi. For a while was off-line.

Little Red Riding Hood Project
Sixteen variants of Little Red Riding Hood, organized by Michael N. Salda from the University of Southern Mississippi. As the preceding.

Snow White
A project devoted to discussion and analysis of Snow White, with 36 variants.

Arabian Nights
This site gives several locations for a number of the tales, in the 19th-century translation of Sir Richard Burton.

Aesop's Fables
An outstanding resource for a related genre, the fable. The site was prepared by Laura Gibbs who is a leading expert in the field.

Bibliographies

Bibliography about Snow White
A thorough bibliography devoted to Snow White in particular and fairy tales in general.

Fairy Tales: A List of Secondary Materials
This list is compiled by the maker of this page, William Barker. Emphasis on literary tales.

Selected Annotated Bibliography on the Brothers Grimm and their Tales
A list by Professor Margaret Yocom at George Mason University.

Useful Resources

Cinderella Stories
A guide to resources.

Mythology and Folklore
A very extensive list of links by P.I.B. Burns of Northwestern University.

Folk and Fairy Tales
Another list by by D.L. Ashliman of Pittsburgh.

The Children's Literature Web Guide
A very full resource, from David K. Brown at the University of Calgary.

Courses on Fairy Tales

The Brothers Grimm and Fairy Tales
Peter Tokofsky has been working as an adjunct professor in the UCLA World Arts and Culture Department. This appears to be a course he put on at an extension division of Johns Hopkins University. An excellent range of readings. [Spring 1993; alas, as of last checking in May 2001, no longer on the web.]

Russian Fairy Tales
A course at University of Pittsburgh by David J. Birnbaum, of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature. [Fall 1998]

Contemporary Critical Approaches to the German Fairy Tale
Taught by Roswitha Burwick from the German Department at Scripps College in Claremont, California. [Fall 1995; now off the web as of January 2004]

English 513 Folk Narrative and Storytelling
An English course by Margaret R. Yocom at George Mason University. Professor Yocom provides an excellent Selected Annotated Bibliography on the Brothers Grimm and their Tales. [Spring 1999; course description gone as of January 2004]