English Fairy Tales / More English Fairy Tales

by Joseph Jacobs, Donald Haase (Editor)

In these two classic collections, first published in 1890 and 1894, Joseph Jacobs combined folklore, children's literature, and the eclectic scholarship of the Victorian era to create a storehouse of tales that inhabited the imaginations of children and adults for generations. Here readers first met Tom Tit Tot, Molly Whuppie, and Jack the Giant-Killer, and first read the stories of the Three Little Pigs, the Three Bears, and Henny-Penny.

Jacobs' daring collections challenged conventional thinking about the meaning of "folk," the individual artistry behind folktales, and the boundaries between folklore and literature, anticipating modern developments in folklore studies. His original editions of these 87 classic tales, along with the original illustrations, are reprinted in this new volume, offering readers an unsurpassed understanding of the development of the classic fairy tale in late Victorian England.

Genres: Fiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Joseph Jacobs was an Australian folklorist, literary critic, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English Folklore. His work went on to popularize some of the worlds best known versions of English fairy tales including "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Goldilocks and the three bears", "The Three Little Pigs", "Jack the Giant Killer" and "The History of Tom Thumb". He published his English fairy tale collections: English Fairy Tales in 1890 and More English Fairytales in 1894 but also went on after and in between both books to publish fairy tales collected from continental Europe as well as Jewish, Celtic and Indian Fairytales which made him one of the most popular writers of fairytales for the English language. Jacobs was also an editor for journals and books on the subject of folklore which included editing the Fables of Bidpai and the Fables of Aesop, as well as articles on the migration of Jewish folklore. He also edited editions of "The Thousand and One Nights". He went on to join The Folklore Society in England and became an editor of the society journal Folklore. Joseph Jacobs also contributed to the Jewish Encyclopedia.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_J...

Reviews

[Willow · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best two collections put together in one book! This is the real thing, people, check it out.

[Cheryl]

Oy. Definitely more for scholars than for families. Oh the beatings and other cruelties. Oh the inequities. Some stories just about impossible to decode, what with dialect and/or high-falutin' language. Second book in the omnibus, published the year after Robert Browning died, includes a prose 'theft' of his poem Pied Piper Of Hamelin.* Just not a pleasure for me to read... the best stories are well-known and available to ordinary readers in other anthologies and picture-books, and most of the others are better off forgotten.

That being said, I did get a kick out of "Coat o' Clay."
And I think authors of original wonder tales & SF, and of adaptations, could find inspiration here.


*Noted that there are older sources of the tale... but come on, Browning's is the one that counts.

Skimmed February 2022.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

These two fascinating collections of folk tales collected and rewritten by Jacobs for children are supplemented by his notes and comments on the sources. They were first published in London in the early 1890s. This 2002 edition includes the original illustrations and an introductory essay by Haas about Jacobs, both his methods and the reasons for his editorial choices, and his life and scholarship.

Included are the Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, Henny-Penny, The Wee Bannock, The King o’ the Cats, and Tamlane among many others. It would be more accurate to label these collections folktales in the English language and its dialects, since the collection includes tales from many parts of the United Kingdom, and entries from Australia and the United States.

There is entertainment and wonder herein for both five-year-olds and scholars.

[Addie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished this finally up in Idyllwild this weekend. Things I appreciate about the English take on these tales: "bogles," the fool-as-husband trope especially in conjunction with the "clever wife" trope, dragons, bog people and folks generally getting sucked into bogs. (It's a very good collection and clearly the source of many of the tales we listen to with Dragonfly Tales).

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting collections of fairy tales, and I enjoyed the artwork well.
I think if I happen to have extra money, I'll add this to my bookshelves.
Recommended? Sure
Buy/Borrow? Borrow

[Carissa Mann · Rating 5 out of 5]

****On goodreads it says its an ebook, but its not
I read seven English Fairy Tales from this book. Listed are the stories I read, and the story I reviewed.
1. The Three Sillies
The Three Sillies was a fun, light hearted fairy tales and I liked that. It wasn't as dark as a lot of the other fairy tales have been that I have read. The Three Sillies was about a gentlemen who found a family of three doing very "silly" things and said if he found three other people doing more silly things he would come back and marry the daughter. And of course, he found three other people doing more silly things and did indeed come back to marry the daughter. The humor was witty and very creative. It had the patterns of three that are very common in fairy tales. With that being said, it would be a good story to put in my collections of stories that I would like to be able to tell aloud because it would be easy to remember.
2. The Rose Tree
3. The Old Woman and her Pig
4. How Jack went to Seek his Fortune
5. Jack Hannaford
6. Binnorie
7. The Story of the Three Bears

[Ch_nataliepelaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The version of this book is an English fairytale of Rumplestiltskins realitive, his name is Tom Tit Tot. He is a small thing with a long tail who helps a young woman with all of her sewing requirements. The story starts off with the woman stuffing her face with five pies, the king comes by and makes her his wife, on the understanding that she will spin five skeins of flax per day for a month, as her mother had boasted she could do. The thing with the long tail tells here if she cannot guess his name by the end of the month, he will carry her away. He was heard boasting his name by the King, who tells her of the funny little man and how he was shouting his name outloud. When the little thing appears again, she reveals his name.
This English Folk Tale dates back to the late 1800's. This version was interesting but i did not understand a lot of the words.
I read this online.