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Beyond the Looking Glass: Extraordinary Works of Fairy Tale & Fantasy
Includes ten famous works, including "The King of the Golden River" by John Ruskin, "The Golden Key" by George MacDonald, and "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. Introduction by Leslie Fiedler.
519 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 23, 2020
Me ha parecido fascinante, y en general todos los cuentos me han gustado mucho. Es una edición muy cuidada y ilustrada además por las ilustraciones originales que se utilizaron en su publicación.
Estos son mis preferidos y en mi opinión los mejores:
EL NIÑO DE MADERA DE Mrs. CLIFFORD
que al parecer trata sobre el autismo y me dio verdadero miedo, cortito y muy bueno.
LOS BAGABUNDEOS DE ARASMON DE MARY DE MORGAN
este es un poco triste pero me parece precioso.
LAS TRANSFORMACIONES DE TINYKIN DE MARK LEMON
una historia de hadas en la que la reina de las hadas se encapricha de un niño, es fantasía pura, muy imaginativo para la época.
NIÑO SOL Y NIÑA LUNA DE GEORGE MACDONALD
otra fantasía, donde dos muchachos tienen que aprender a no tener miedo a lo que desconocen. Esta es la que mas me gusta.
EL MERCADO DE LOS DUENDES DE CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
ya habia oido hablar de el y me parece una gozada muy erotico para la epoca y para ser infantil. Ademas en esta edicion se nos presenta este poema en ingles original y al lado su traducción, con lo que se puede disfrutar enormemente.
Luego tambien esta:
EL RE DEL RIO DORADO DE JOHN RUSKIN
A TRAVES DEL FUEGO DE MARY DE MORGAN
SE BUSCA A UN REY DE MAGGIE BROWNE este es el que menos me ha gustado
LA LLAVE DE ORO DE GEORGE MACDONALD
Estos son mis preferidos y en mi opinión los mejores:
EL NIÑO DE MADERA DE Mrs. CLIFFORD
que al parecer trata sobre el autismo y me dio verdadero miedo, cortito y muy bueno.
LOS BAGABUNDEOS DE ARASMON DE MARY DE MORGAN
este es un poco triste pero me parece precioso.
LAS TRANSFORMACIONES DE TINYKIN DE MARK LEMON
una historia de hadas en la que la reina de las hadas se encapricha de un niño, es fantasía pura, muy imaginativo para la época.
NIÑO SOL Y NIÑA LUNA DE GEORGE MACDONALD
otra fantasía, donde dos muchachos tienen que aprender a no tener miedo a lo que desconocen. Esta es la que mas me gusta.
EL MERCADO DE LOS DUENDES DE CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
ya habia oido hablar de el y me parece una gozada muy erotico para la epoca y para ser infantil. Ademas en esta edicion se nos presenta este poema en ingles original y al lado su traducción, con lo que se puede disfrutar enormemente.
Luego tambien esta:
EL RE DEL RIO DORADO DE JOHN RUSKIN
A TRAVES DEL FUEGO DE MARY DE MORGAN
SE BUSCA A UN REY DE MAGGIE BROWNE este es el que menos me ha gustado
LA LLAVE DE ORO DE GEORGE MACDONALD
January 18, 2019
In sum: There are many good stories available besides the traditional ones (for example Grimm), Perrault, Andersen, and Wilde. The scholars who repeat the myth that all that children could read would didactic tales need to become more widely read.
Too bad this book doesn't have notes or index but perhaps there are more sources listed in the essays. In any case, I do recommend it. I did decide to just read the stories, too tired & busy to read the introductory matter. It seems that original illustrations are included for all:
The King of the Golden River is one I've seen before. A nice story, with lovely bits, about bad ugly elder brothers being punished and good third handsome boy being rewarded. There are both Christian and Pagan elements. I love the vocabulary (and would have as a child, too). "He had been compelled to abandon his basket of food, which became a perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had now no means of refreshing himself but by breaking off and eating some of the pieces of ice. This, however, relieved his thirst; an hour's repose recruited his hardy frame, and with the indomitable spirit of avarice, he resumed his laborious journey." (Yes, avarice; this is from the first brother's quest.)
Petsetilla's Posy: A Fairy Tale for Young and Old is a satire from 1871, heavy on explaining all the foolish things this king and the other characters do, light on story. I daresay it's written more for adults than for children. I like the idea that "out of every ten acres included within the city wall, two were bound to be left in a wild and uncultivated state of heath, as play-ground and lungs for the neighborhood." Also consider, "salaries were paid to those only who did nothing, it being feared that, otherwise, those who had real work to do might be inspired by desire of gain rather than innate sense of duty."
*Wooden Tony* by Mrs. Clifford, aka Lucy Lane Clifford, is a haunting fable, poetically written, in the vein of Andersen or Wilde. Cott may be right to claim that the child is autistic, but whether or not the reader agrees with that diagnosis, there is much to think about in this short gem. It's collected in the second, 1895, edition of Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise and in her collection for adults, The Last Touches, And Other Stories.
"Through the Fire" is from On a Pincushion and Other Tales by Mary De Morgan. It does not seem to be available online yet. It's not of especial value, being an adventure with a happy ending, relatively simple and earnest.
And now I really must get this book back to the library, so thank goodness I can find the rest online.
"The Wanderings of Arasmon," by the same author, is from The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde and Other Stories, which is avl on Project Gutenberg and Open Library. It is illustrated by the famous Walter Crane.
(Not included in this book are any stories from the author's third collection, The Windfairies and Other Tales.)
Wanted-A King, Or, How Merle Set the Nursery Rhymes to Rights is a bit like Alice in Wonderland, but Merle fractures fairy tales instead of verses like Father William, and it's mostly not quite so hallucogenic. It does have a very interesting bit about ppl being born in the wrong bodies, which can totally be taken as support for transgender reassignment, but can also be read as reinforcement for girls and boys being expected to fit their proper roles. I'll lean to the first, as Merle is a girl, but is needed in the story to be adventurous and and boldly assertive.
Tinykin's Transformations. a Child's Story by Mark Lemon is available on Open Library.
The Golden Key and The Day Boy and the Night Girl are by George MacDonald. The former is in The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories on Project Gutenberg, the latter is avl. to borrow on Open Library.
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti is famous and widely available.
Too bad this book doesn't have notes or index but perhaps there are more sources listed in the essays. In any case, I do recommend it. I did decide to just read the stories, too tired & busy to read the introductory matter. It seems that original illustrations are included for all:
The King of the Golden River is one I've seen before. A nice story, with lovely bits, about bad ugly elder brothers being punished and good third handsome boy being rewarded. There are both Christian and Pagan elements. I love the vocabulary (and would have as a child, too). "He had been compelled to abandon his basket of food, which became a perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had now no means of refreshing himself but by breaking off and eating some of the pieces of ice. This, however, relieved his thirst; an hour's repose recruited his hardy frame, and with the indomitable spirit of avarice, he resumed his laborious journey." (Yes, avarice; this is from the first brother's quest.)
Petsetilla's Posy: A Fairy Tale for Young and Old is a satire from 1871, heavy on explaining all the foolish things this king and the other characters do, light on story. I daresay it's written more for adults than for children. I like the idea that "out of every ten acres included within the city wall, two were bound to be left in a wild and uncultivated state of heath, as play-ground and lungs for the neighborhood." Also consider, "salaries were paid to those only who did nothing, it being feared that, otherwise, those who had real work to do might be inspired by desire of gain rather than innate sense of duty."
*Wooden Tony* by Mrs. Clifford, aka Lucy Lane Clifford, is a haunting fable, poetically written, in the vein of Andersen or Wilde. Cott may be right to claim that the child is autistic, but whether or not the reader agrees with that diagnosis, there is much to think about in this short gem. It's collected in the second, 1895, edition of Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise and in her collection for adults, The Last Touches, And Other Stories.
"Through the Fire" is from On a Pincushion and Other Tales by Mary De Morgan. It does not seem to be available online yet. It's not of especial value, being an adventure with a happy ending, relatively simple and earnest.
And now I really must get this book back to the library, so thank goodness I can find the rest online.
"The Wanderings of Arasmon," by the same author, is from The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde and Other Stories, which is avl on Project Gutenberg and Open Library. It is illustrated by the famous Walter Crane.
(Not included in this book are any stories from the author's third collection, The Windfairies and Other Tales.)
Wanted-A King, Or, How Merle Set the Nursery Rhymes to Rights is a bit like Alice in Wonderland, but Merle fractures fairy tales instead of verses like Father William, and it's mostly not quite so hallucogenic. It does have a very interesting bit about ppl being born in the wrong bodies, which can totally be taken as support for transgender reassignment, but can also be read as reinforcement for girls and boys being expected to fit their proper roles. I'll lean to the first, as Merle is a girl, but is needed in the story to be adventurous and and boldly assertive.
Tinykin's Transformations. a Child's Story by Mark Lemon is available on Open Library.
The Golden Key and The Day Boy and the Night Girl are by George MacDonald. The former is in The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories on Project Gutenberg, the latter is avl. to borrow on Open Library.
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti is famous and widely available.
September 26, 2008
Fairy tales and fantasy from the Victorian Era. Authors John Ruskin, Tom Hood, Maggie Brown, Mark Lemon, Mrs. Clifford, Mary de Morgan, George MacDonald, and Christina Rossetti. Made even more fun if you apply Freudian interpretations to these lovely stories and poems. Sexual repression really oozes out in odd and at times disturbing ways.
February 24, 2016
Beyond the Looking Glass is an anthology of ten fairy tales from the Victorian era. Three of the stories are novellas, and one is a long poem (Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti). Each story includes black and white illustrations by different illustrators of that time period.
My favorite stories are The King of the Golden River, by John Ruskin; Wooden Tony, an eerie story about a little boy who, in today’s world, would be considered autistic; and The Golden Key, by George MacDonald, a Christian mystic author, who wrote “not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five." I first read some of these stories about twenty-five years ago and was most impressed by The Day Boy and the Night Girl, by George MacDonald. This time around, I wasn’t as captivated by that particular story.
There is an introductory essay by the noted literary critic Leslie Fiedler, and a longer introduction—Notes on Fairy Faith and the Idea of Childhood—by Jonathon Cott, the editor of this collection.
For whatever reason, the introductory essay by Fiedler and the notes by Cott are in a smaller font size than the font size used for the stories. I found the small font size and the density of material, especially in Cott’s notes, difficult. Cott quickly plunges into intellectual depths that I found hard to follow, with frequent references to such luminaries as Gaston Bachelard, Evans-Wentz (author of The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries), Tolkien, Freud, Jung, Walter Benjamin, and others. In my opinion, he tried to compress a whole book’s worth of fairy tale etiology and psychology into about 25 pages of text.
Four stars for the illustrations and the stories cited above. Three stars for the rest.
My favorite stories are The King of the Golden River, by John Ruskin; Wooden Tony, an eerie story about a little boy who, in today’s world, would be considered autistic; and The Golden Key, by George MacDonald, a Christian mystic author, who wrote “not for children, but for the child-like, whether they be of five, or fifty, or seventy-five." I first read some of these stories about twenty-five years ago and was most impressed by The Day Boy and the Night Girl, by George MacDonald. This time around, I wasn’t as captivated by that particular story.
There is an introductory essay by the noted literary critic Leslie Fiedler, and a longer introduction—Notes on Fairy Faith and the Idea of Childhood—by Jonathon Cott, the editor of this collection.
For whatever reason, the introductory essay by Fiedler and the notes by Cott are in a smaller font size than the font size used for the stories. I found the small font size and the density of material, especially in Cott’s notes, difficult. Cott quickly plunges into intellectual depths that I found hard to follow, with frequent references to such luminaries as Gaston Bachelard, Evans-Wentz (author of The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries), Tolkien, Freud, Jung, Walter Benjamin, and others. In my opinion, he tried to compress a whole book’s worth of fairy tale etiology and psychology into about 25 pages of text.
Four stars for the illustrations and the stories cited above. Three stars for the rest.
March 15, 2013
Una antología de cuentos realmente estimulantes y en la que nos encontramos joyas fulgurantes, aisladas, de un brillo deslumbrante dentro de cuentos de una calidad media alta... No del todo redondos, pero con detalles sorprendentes y que nos hacen plantearnos los caminos trillados y aburridos que ha seguido la literatura infantil. Aquí encontramos provocación, disconformismo, dobles lecturas... todo un regalo en una edición muy cuidadosa que rescata las traducciones de Carmen Martín Gaite.
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December 12, 2010The problem with this pretty 70s paperback is that it has been falling apart in my hands. I can deal with a cracked spine but when the pages are falling out it's just too much to deal with. A shame.
December 2, 2022
To know someone you need to know something about their home.
To understand where Alice is coming from we should look at the literature that is usually overlooked from that era. This book also helps in not just novels, stories, and poetry of the Victorian Era, but how they came to be and their roots in earlier literature.
Here are also helpful illustrations (some in color) to help relay the stories. This is more of an anthology than a criticism. You may want to redefine what a fairy tale is.
To understand where Alice is coming from we should look at the literature that is usually overlooked from that era. This book also helps in not just novels, stories, and poetry of the Victorian Era, but how they came to be and their roots in earlier literature.
Here are also helpful illustrations (some in color) to help relay the stories. This is more of an anthology than a criticism. You may want to redefine what a fairy tale is.
February 20, 2020
Muy interesantes cuentos aunque al inicio me perdía un poco por lo q se tornaba aburrido pero luego mejoró mucho.
September 10, 2017
Stories you may have missed growing up that would have given you the BEST imaginings and dreams! I enjoy them now, but as a child- they were sophisticated but accessible.
April 5, 2008
Other works around the time of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There and the Victorian fairy tale revival.
It's out of print, and hard to get, but it's a trip.
It's out of print, and hard to get, but it's a trip.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews