User blog:NibiruMul/Forgotten fairy tale collection reviews, part 6

I finally got my hands on another old fairy tale collection. This one was actually in my attic. It belonged to my grandfather's cousin who passed away three years ago. The book is called The Story Teller and it is part of a series of books called The Young Folks' Library. The original book was written in 1938, and the reprint is from around 1952. Unlike the other books in the collection, this one is not in the public domain (usually, only books written before 1923 can be public domain). I had actually heard of it prior to discovering a physical copy, and I didn't know it was even in my house!

Now let's get to the collection. Surprisingly, the book has only one story by the Brothers Grimm (The Brave Little Tailor) - an anomaly for a 20th-century fairy tale collection! A few famous stories, like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Puss in Boots, do not appear in the collection at all.

The book starts out with Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This story is the version we all know today, where Goldilocks is a little girl. (The Green Fairy Book contains the first version, where Goldilocks is an old woman. Southey revised the story several years after he first wrote it.) Not much else can be said. Interestingly, I found out that Goldilocks and the Three Bears is actually a stand-alone fairy tale and unlike most fairy tales, it was not orignally part of a collection. (Sorry if I'm going a little off-topic.)

Next up is Beauty and the Beast. Beaumont's version is used, and the wording is pretty similar to the version found in my Scribd library. It has a nice illustration towards the end, where the Beast turns back into a prince. Two more Beaumont stories, Blanche and Rosalinda (an alternate title for The Widow and her Two Daughters) and The Three Wishes, appear a little later in the book. Glad to see the authors remembered that Beaumont had other stories besides Beauty and the Beast!

The book contains four stories by Madame d'Aulnoy - The White Cat, The Yellow Dwarf, The Story of Pretty Goldilocks (here called The Fair One with the Golden Locks), and Felicia and the Pot of Pinks. Some of the illustrations from Andrew Lang's Fairy Books are used. Madame d'Aulnoy's stories largely fell out of favor after World War I, and I'm glad to see a book postdating that time with her stories in it. The Fair One with the Golden Locks contains quite a few nice illustrations too. This book's version of The Yellow Dwarf preserves the story's unhappy ending. The stories are mostly simplified so they can appeal to children.

Some of the stories from the fourth collection I reviewed appear in this story, like The Children in the Wood, The History of Little Jack, The Fisherman and the Genie, and The Seven Champions of Christendom.

Most interestingly, this story includes two Comte de Caylus stories under different titles - Prince Mu and the Princess Zaza (Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine) and Prince Wee and the Princess Sabel. The two titles are closer to the French titles than Andrew Lang's - the former is called Le Prince Muguet et La Princesse Zaza, while the latter is called Le Prince Courtebotte et La Princesse Zibeline. The translations seem to be based on Andrew Lang's. The stories are mostly similar to Lang's, but the wording and names are different. Lang's illustrations are used, although among them are illustrations from two other Comte de Caylus stories (Prince Narcissus and the Princess Potentilla and Prince Vivien and the Princess Placida), which do not appear in this collection. The two Caylus stories in this collection were actually how I found out about this book in the first place.

The final story in the collection is Aladdin. Luckily, unlike the other one I reviewed, this one ends the right way and doesn't just make it all just a dream.

Most of the illustrations are black and white, but there are a few colored illustrations too. The original illustrations (the ones not from Lang's books) have that typical mid-20th century charm to them. Unfortunately my camera is broken, so I can't share them with you, and the books are too old to put in the scanner. Maybe when I get a new camera I'll show some of them.

This collection was definitely good, and I'm glad I had a physical copy to look at too.

Stories in the collection:
 * 1) The Story of the Three Bears (Goldilocks and the Three Bears)
 * 2) Beauty and the Beast
 * 3) Diamonds and Toads
 * 4) Blanche and Rosalinda (The Widow and her Two Daughters)
 * 5) The White Cat
 * 6) Tom Thumb
 * 7) Cinderella
 * 8) Jack and the Beanstalk
 * 9) The Three Wishes
 * 10) The Children in the Wood
 * 11) The History of Little Jack
 * 12) The Fair One with the Golden Locks (The Story of Pretty Goldilocks)
 * 13) Whittington and his Cat
 * 14) The Seven Champions of Christendom
 * 15) The Fisherman and the Genie
 * 16) The Yellow Dwarf
 * 17) Felicia and the Pot of Pinks
 * 18) Prince Mu and the Princess Zaza (Prince Featherhead and the Princess Celandine)
 * 19) Prince Wee and the Princess Sabel (Heart of Ice)
 * 20) The Princess on the Glass Hill
 * 21) The Brave Little Tailor
 * 22) Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp