Fairy Tales:
A Few Basic Texts

by William Barker

Note: Though I have divided these by language groups, the tales do not respect national or linguistic boundaries. There are tales and collections of tales in many languages, and many of these have worked their way into English. I concentrate here only on a few obvious Italian, French, German, and English sources for the standard fairy tales. Surrounding this traditional material is an ocean of other printed texts. This list is in progress; please let me know if there are other collections or translations it would be good to include.

Italian Tales

Basile, Giambattista. Lo cunto de li cunti: overo, lo trattenemiento de peccerille. Ed. Mario Petrini. Bari: Laterza, 1976. (Edition in the original Neapolitan dialect, on-line at Scrittori d'Italia Laterza.)

--. Lo Cunto de li cunti. Ed. Michele Rak. Milan: Garzanti, 1986. (Facing page dialect and modern Italian.)

--. Il pentamerone ossia la fiaba delle fiabe. Trans. Benedetto Croce. 1925. Bari: Laterza, [1957]. (The Italian philosopher Croce was fascinated by the collection and prepared a translation from the dialect into Italian. There is a study of his work: Ester Zago, "Note alla traduzione di Benedetto Croce del Pentamerone di Giambattista Basile" Merveilles et contes 1.2 [1987]: 119-25.)

--. The Pentamerone. Ed. and trans. N. M. Penzer. 2 vols. London: John Lane; New York: E.P. Dutton, 1932. (Translated from the Italian text of Benedetto Croce. This is a very carefully prepared translation with many supplementary notes. There seems to be no subsequent edition or even reprint of this fascinating work. A new translation has been announced by Nancy Canepa of Dartmouth College.)

Straparola, Giovanni Francesco. Le piacevoli notti. Ed. Giuseppe Rua. 2 vols. 1899-1908. Bari: Laterza, 1927.(On line at Scrittori d'Italia Laterza

--. The Nights of Straparola. Trans. W.G. Waters. 2 vols. London: Lawrence, 1894. (There is a second four-volume edition: London: Society of Bibliophiles, 1898.)

Also of great interest is a compilation of Italian Folk Tales, compiled, and in most cases rewritten, by the novelist Italo Calvino (trans. George Martin [New York: Pantheon, 1980]).

French Tales

Delarue, Paul, and Marie-Louise Tenéze, eds. Le Conte populaire français; catalogue raisonné des versions de France et des pays de langue française d'outre-mer: Canada, Louisiane, ilots français des Etats-Unis, Antilles françaises, Haïti, Ile Maurice, La Réunion. Vol 1, Paris: Erasme, 1957; vol 2, Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve at Larose, 1964; vol 3, ibid, 1976; vol 4, ibid, 1985. (A 4-volume listing with some texts, one of the outstanding works of scholarship in the field. Vols 1 and 2 list marvellous tales, vol 3 animal tales, and vol 4 religious tales.)

Delarue, Paul, ed. The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales. Trans. Austin E. Fife. New York: Knopf, 1956.

Perrault, Charles. Contes. Ed. G. Rouger. Paris: Garnier, 1967. (The standard edition for citation.)

--. Fairy Tales. Trans. Geoffrey Brereton. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957. (A straightforward translation.)

Warner, Marina, ed. Wonder Tales. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994.

Zipes, Jack, ed. and trans. Beauties, Beasts and Enchantments: Classic French Fairy Tales. New York: Meridian/Penguin, 1989.

German Tales

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Kinder- und Hausmärchen. 3 vols. Ed. Hans Rölleke. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1980. (A standard German edition for citation. Because of the many early editions of the text as well as manuscripts prepared by the Brothers Grimm, there is no one single definitive edition. But this one is often referred to. Rölleke has prepared many different texts of the work.)

--. German Popular Stories, Translated from the Kinder und Haus Märchen, Collected by M.M. Grimm, from Oral Tradition. Trans. Edgar Taylor. Vol. 1. London: C. Baldwyn, 1823. Vol. 2. London: James Robins; Dublin: Joseph Robins, 1826. Rpt. London: Scolar Press, 1977. (A charming way to read a selection of the tales, here illustrated by George Cruikshank.)

--. Grimms' Household Tales. With the Authors' Notes. Trans. Margaret Hunt. 2 vols. London: George Bell, 1884. Rpt. Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1968. (Translation is somewhat dated, but the work was prepared with some sense of scholarship and the volumes are still valuable for the notes of the Grimm brothers which are given in full.)

--. The Grimms' German Folk Tales. Trans. Francis P. Magoun, Jr., and Alexander H. Krappe. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1960. [GR 166 G7313 1960]. (Reliable translation by two outstanding philologists.)

--. Grimms' Tales for Young and Old. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Doubleday, 1977. (This is an excellent and very clear translation, based on the 1857 seventh edition of the Grimms' collection. I find this the easiest translation to read.)

--. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Trans. Jack Zipes. New York: Bantam, 2003. (A recent translation by a leading scholar. Also based on the seventh edition, it has appended many tales included in earlier editions but dropped by 1857.)

--. Selected Tales. Trans. Joyce Crick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. (This Oxford World's Classics edition has an excellent introduction and notes.)

Recent General Collections

Hallett, Martin, and Barbara Karasek, eds. Folk and Fairy Tales . Third edition. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2002. (Includes a good selection of standard tales, several modern versions, and a number of critical articles.)

Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales . New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974. (Each of the tales is given in the earliest English translation; the emphasis is on the tales from the French tradition.)

Tatar, Maria, ed. The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. (Substantial selection by major critic.)

Zipes, Jack, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition from Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. (A very full compilation of many of the standard stories in Grimm with antecedents from Straparola, Basile, Perrault, Leprince de Beaumont, and others. Minimal indexing and commentary.)

Miscellaneous Older Collections in English

Lang, Andrew. [The Fairy Book Series]. Each volume came out under the name of a colour, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889. Lang was a serious collector and editor, who was also very interested in popular education. The series of fairy books was not, however, a scholarly collection. The sequence, which was reprinted by Dover Books in the 1960s, was as follows: Blue (1889); Red (1890); Green (1892); Yellow (1894); Pink (1897) -- Japan, Scandinavia, Sicily, Africa, and Spain; Grey (1900); Violet (1901); Crimson (1903) -- Hungary, Russia, Rumania, Finland, Iceland, Japan, and Sicily; Brown (1904); Orange (1906); Olive (1907) -- Turkey, India, Denmark, Armenia, and the Sudan; Lilac (1910).

Jacob, Joseph. English Fairy Tales . 1898. New York: Dover, 1967.

Afanas'ev, Aleksandr. Russian Fairy Tales. Trans. Norbert Guterman. New York: Pantheon, 1945. (This edition is a version of the collection used by Propp in his analysis, but unfortunately lacks a numbering system to collate with Propp. There is in this edition a short commentary on the tales by Roman Jakobson, the linguistics scholar.)