Author : Joseph Jacobs Year of publication: 2009 Format: Paperback Signature: No First edition :No Condition: New Category: Childrens books Cost of book: £5.99 Price negotiable: No
Specifics:
A reprint of the 1892 classic by Joseph Jacobs. ISBN 9781907256042
This
volume contains forty-three English folk stories and tales. But why call them
FAIRY STORIES? One cannot imagine a child saying, 'Tell me a folk-tale', or
'Another nursery tale, please, grandma'. The words 'Fairy Tales' must accordingly be
taken to include tales in which occurs something 'fairy', something
extraordinary--fairies, giants, dwarfs, speaking animals. It must be taken also
to cover tales in which what is extraordinary is the stupidity of some of the
actors, as is so common in moral tales.
Many
of the tales in this volume, as in similar collections from other European
countries, are what the folklorists call Drolls. They serve to justify the
title of “Merrie England”, a
title which used to be given to England,
indicating the unsuspected capacity for fun and humour among the English. The
story of Tom Tit Tot, which opens the collection, is unequalled
among all other folk-tales, for its combined sense of humour and dramatic
power.
So
take some time out and travel back to a period before television, or even radio
for that matter, when families would gather around a crackling and spitting
hearth and granddad or grandma or an
uncle or aunt would delight and captivate their audience with stories passed on
to them from their mothers, fathers and grandparents.
