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Turnip Princess & Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales

by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth, Erika Eichenseer

ISBN13: 9780143107422
ISBN10: 0143107429

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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A rare discovery in the world of fairy talesnow for the first time in English

With this volume, the holy trinity of fairy talesthe Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersenbecomes a quartet. In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schönwerths work was lostuntil a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manuscripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive.

Now, for the first time, Schönwerths lost fairy tales are available in English. Violent, dark, and full of action, and upending the relationship between damsels in distress and their dragon-slaying heroes, these more than seventy stories bring us closer than ever to the unadorned oral tradition in which fairy tales are rooted, revolutionizing our understanding of a hallowed genre.

For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Review

“Schönwerths tales have a compositional fierceness and energy rarely seen in stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault.” —The New Yorker

“[This] new collection of German folk stories . . . challenges preconceptions about many of the most commonly known fairytales. . . . Many of the stories centre around surprisingly emancipated female characters.” —The Guardian

“Schönwerths legacy counts as the most significant collection in the German-speaking world in the nineteenth century.” —Daniel Drascek, University of Regensburg

Synopsis

A rare discovery in the world of fairy tales--now for the first time in English

Move over, Cinderella: Make way for the Turnip Princess And for the "Cinderfellas" in these stories, which turn our understanding of gender in fairy tales on its head.

With this volume, the holy trinity of fairy tales--the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen--becomes a quartet. In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Sch nwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Sch nwerth's work was lost--until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manu-scripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive. Now, for the first time, Sch nwerth's lost fairy tales are available in English. Violent, dark, and full of action, and upending the relationship between damsels in distress and their dragon-slaying heroes, these more than seventy stories bring us closer than ever to the unadorned oral tradition in which fairy tales are rooted, revolutionizing our understanding of a hallowed genre.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Synopsis

Hans Christian Andersen was the profoundly imaginative writer and storyteller who revolutionizedand#160;literature for children. He gave us the now standard versions of some traditional fairy talesandmdash;with an anarchic twistandmdash;but many of his most famous tales sprang directly from his imagination.

The thirty stories here range from exuberant early works such as "The Tinderbox" and "The Emperor's New Clothes" through poignant masterpieces such as "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling," to more subversive later tales such as "The Ice maiden" and "The Wood Nymph."

A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with French flaps, rough front, and luxurious packaging

About the Author

R. J. Hollingdale has translated eleven of Nietzsche’s books and published two books about him. He has also translated works by, among others, Schopenhauer, Goethe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Lichtenberg and Theodor Fontane, many of these for the Penguin Classics. He is Honorary President of the British Nietzsche Society, and was for the Australian academic year 1991 Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Melbourne.

Fairy Tales Acknowledgments

Chronology

Introduction

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.5 (2 comments)

`	Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club com , April 16, 2015 (view all comments by Courtesy of Mother Daughter Book Club com) The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault��"all were well known collectors of fairy tales, those magical, lesson-infused stories spread centuries ago in the oral tradition. A lesser known collector, Franz Xaver Von Schönwerth, was also at work recording old stories he heard in northern Bavaria during the same time as the Grimms. Until recently, his work remained lost. But with the discovery of manuscripts resting in a German archive, Schönwerth’s tales have now been published for all to read. The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales is a collection of more than 70 of Schönwerth’s stories, selected from a cache of 500 by the woman who discovered them, Erika Eichenseer. Many of the tales sound similar to ones already known, such as Cinderella and Seven at One Blow, but many are less familiar. Most of the tales are dark and cautionary, often with one wise brother or sister who outsmarts siblings, or a magical being who brings aid to those who are destitute. Sometimes animals play the role of enchanted humans waiting to be set free. All provide a glimpse into the lives of the people who told these stories and passed them along to others. The Turnip Princess should appeal to anyone who enjoys reading fairy tales, both as a comparison to what has come before them and as something to be appreciated on its own. The publisher provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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`	mwgerard , April 15, 2015 (view all comments by mwgerard) The archetypal story of untapped treasure has been proven possible again. Erika Eichenseer discovered thirty boxes of von Schonwerth’s manuscripts just waiting to be uncovered. Hoping to find such a trove, Eichenseer brought to light what had been stored in the Regensburg archive for more than a century. Fairy tales are fantastical by their very nature. Yet they contain insight into a culture’s fears and desires. When I studied German in college, one of the things we did to practice was translate fairy tales. They were short and usually contained simple vocabulary. We could stumble through it anyway. I will never forget the story of “Die Waßernixe“, the water-sprite. In short, a brother and sister don’t listen to the warnings, fall into a fountain that is inhabited by an evil water sprite. She enslaves them. One day, they decide to escape. They leave just as she returns from church (?!?!), and she chases them. In order to get away, they throw a hairbrush and a comb with each turn into a bristly mountain. This is not enough, so the girl throws a mirror over her shoulder, which becomes a slippery glass mountain. This stymies the sprite and they get away. To this day I am still puzzled by this story. What is the moral? Don’t play next to fountains? Always bring a hairbrush and a mirror? Don’t trust fairies who go to church? The point of my little tangent is that fairy tales are the stuff of local imaginations and simple lives. They both explain so much about a set of people, and are always somewhat unattainable. These stories made perfect sense to those who told them around a fire or to a child before bed. This book is sorted in to categories: magic and romance, enchanted animals, otherworldly creatures, legends, tall tales and anecdotes, and tales about nature. There are dozens of stories, some of them barely a page long. But each contains its own (if inscrutable) dose of wisdom. Their style is terse and unflinching. There once was a king with a daughter named Barbara. She was so ugly that everyone made fun of her. She lived a lonely life. ~Pg.130 And: “Oh, no,” they said. “It’s just the meat.” She turned the sack inside out, and to her surprise the corpse of an old woman fell to the ground. They buried her as quickly as possible and no one was the wiser. Then they devoured with gusto the meat they had stolen. ~201 Readers are very fortunate that Eichenseer found and compiled this book. I am excited to see the literary works that grow up around these stories, especially in this day of reimagined classics like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
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