The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales

by Arthur Quiller-Couch (Adapted by), Jacob Grimm, Kay Nielsen (illustrator)

Brilliant color illustrations complement a noted folklorist's masterful retellings of traditional fairy tales in this splendid hardcover edition. Quiller-Couch, a distinguished Cambridge don, recounts seven tales of enchantment: "Minon-Minette," "Felicia, or The Pot of Pinks," "Rosanie, or The Inconstant Prince," "The Man Who Never Laughed," "John and the Ghosts," "The Czarina's Violet," and the title tale. The stories are illuminated by 23 color plates by Kay Nielsen, a Golden Age of Illustration artist whose Art Nouveau images recall the style of Aubrey Beardsley.

Genres: Fairy Tales, Picture Books, Fiction

24 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2012

About the author

Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch was a Cornish writer, who published under the pen name of Q. He is primarily remembered for the monumental "Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900" (later extended to 1918), and for his literary criticism. He guided the taste of many who never met him, including American writer Helene Hanff, author of 84 Charing Cross Road, its sequel, Q's Legacy, and the putatively fictional Horace Rumpole via John Mortimer, his literary amanuensis.

Reviews

[Leah]

my nana was going through her shelves and she gave me this today! I read it all in one sitting and I remembered how much I love fairy tales and beautiful illustrations and her. anyway, betty is a true gem and i love her a ton and she inspired my reading life ok enough gross emotions whooooooo

[Ȝmman Saqqaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

The whole story is not telling a tale of the shoes that were danced to pieces but a tale of mistrust. It's obvious that the king had never trusted his daughters; he treated them as his princesses rather than daughters. As a resultant to all this, his daughters never felt encouraged to open up for him and told him were they danced their shoes to pieces every night. He acted like a king and put his daughters as a prize for who could solve this mystery which was so mean. Nevertheless, it is still a fairy tale and if there was anything a child could learn from this tale is to be honest with his parents and parents in return give your children an absolute trust so they will have no excuse to sneak in behind your backs.

[Marissa Pezzullo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought that this book was a very sneaky one. The sisters some how left every night to go dancing. Only through the magic from mother nature, a prince is able to be invisible and follow them to find out what they do. This would be a good book to have in my classroom library because it may speak to the readers about dancing, and it may be a good book for them to connect to.

[Le Maistre Chat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calla Editions facsimile of 1912 original.
Why I bought it: trying to get a complete set of Kay Nielsen books.

This is an odd collection of eight fairy tales, compiled/retold in 1912 for artist Kay Nielsen. Nielsen was a Dane active in the "Golden Age of illustration". Much less prolific than Arthur Rackham, Heath Robinson or Edmund Dulac, his masterpiece was a collection of Nordic folk tales ("fairy tales" set in the Christian era and full of trolls, not to be confused with Norse myths) titled East of the Sun and West of the Moon. He failed to get an edition of The Arabian Nights published for which his 21 paintings (and a 22nd incomplete) are absolutely stunning. Other works include our current subject, a Hans Andersen anthology and a Grimm anthology.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch was Cornish gentry who compiled The Oxford Book of English Verse in the early 20th century and was apparently a well-known literary critic. Being an old-fashioned British gentleman, he was fluent in French and spends a considerable part of his preface talking about the at least 41 volumes of literary fairy tales passed down from pre-Revolutionary French writers, Le Cabinet des Fées. The original title, apparently suggested by Nielsen, was "In Powder and Crinoline". It's easy to translate or retell fairy tales from the "Powder" era, he says, then complains that fairy tales weren't written in the "Crinoline" era: even if he's defining the term as what women wore from about 1850 to 1866, Hans Andersen was publishing them that whole time. Strange.
The contents include THE TWELVE DANCING PRINCESSES, which may be a folktale (the Grimms collected it), MINON-MINETTE, FELICIA OR THE POT OF PINKS and ROSANIE OR THE INCONSTANT PRINCE from France, THE MAN WHO NEVER LAUGHED, which Quiller-Couch retells from William Morris, a "youth braves a haunted house for a reward" story similar to the Grimm's, and THE CZARINA'S VIOLET, which Q. seems to have made up, has no supernatural element, and stars Bismarck. An odd collection of obscure literary fairy tales, but the opulent illustrations stylized similar to Art Noveau are superb.

[Krisette Spangler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another beautifully illustrated collection of fairy tales released by Dover Publications from their Calla Editions. I'm so happy that many of these books that were out of print have been rereleased with illustrations by these great artists.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for the wonderful illustrations by Kay Nielsen! The stories are lovely too, some seem a little dated but given that the original title of this collection was "In Powder And Crinoline" that would seem to be deliberate.