The Victorian Fairy Tale Book

by Michael Patrick Hearn

From Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin and William Makepeace Thackeray’s Rose and the Ring to Kenneth Grahame’s Reluctant Dragon and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, here are seventeen classic stories and poems from the golden age of the English fairy tale. Some of them amuse, some enchant, some satirize and criticize, but each one–in the words of Laurence Houseman, author of the classic Rocking-Horse Land– “is an expression of the joy of living.”

Accompanied by the illustrations from the original editions of these works–by such celebrated Victorian artists as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Maxfield Parrish, and Arthur Rackham–this collection will delight readers both young and old.

Genres: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories, Folklore, Classics, Childrens

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Michael Patrick Hearn is an American literary scholar as well as a man of letters specializing in children's literature and its illustration. His works include The Annotated Wizard of Oz (1973/2000), The Annotated Christmas Carol (1977/2003), and The Annotated Huckleberry Finn (2001). He considers the three most quintessential American novels to be Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
He is an expert on L. Frank Baum and is currently writing a biography about him, which sets forth to correct the numerous errors in previous biographies, many based on Frank Joslyn Baum's out of print and largely mythological To Please a Child.
As an Oz and L. Frank Baum scholar, he also edited The Critical Heritage Edition of the Wizard of Oz for Schocken Books (1986), wrote the introduction to the first published version of the screenplay of The Wizard of Oz (1939 film). He appears in the documentaries Oz: the American Fairyland and Matilda Joslyn Gage (1983), credited as an "Authority on L. Frank Baum". He gave the keynote address at the Centennial convention of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz mounted by The International Wizard of Oz Club, and often makes public appearances in which he lectures on Baum.
Hearn was a student at Hamilton College in 1968-69 and then transferred to Bard College, where he graduated in 1972. At Hamilton, he was encouraged to become an author by one of his professors, Alex Haley. His first book, The Annotated Wizard of Oz, was completed when he was a student at Bard.

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introduction of this book describes the battle over the ancient Celtic fairyland in Britain, from its renaissance in Shakespeare and his contemporaries through various degrees of suppression under changing regimes and varieties of Christian moral anxiety. Fears of corrupting the young were resolved by Victorian times into the moral fairytale, strictly cleansed of the 'savagery and ethical ambiguity' of many traditional stories and recast as "engines for the propulsion of all virtues into the little mind in an agreeable and harmless form" (Edward Salmon, 1888).

If I'm making it sound like the Victorians sucked the spirit out of children's literature (as arguably they tried to out of everything else), then that impression is one I'd agree with, but there are pleasures in this book nonetheless, even if some of them are forbidden. There is rebellion against some of the hard-headed positivism, rationalism and pragmatism of the day, and much inspiration from the currents of reaction to industrialisation in the Arts and Crafts movement and Romanticism. Literatures of these traditions have inspired much of A.S.Byatt's work and I am wary of letting my distaste for the Victorian period slide into contempt and sweeping simplification.

Hearn has made some nice selections. Ruskin contributes a beautifully written moral tale in the style of the brothers Grimm, and Thackeray's 'The Rose and The Ring' is full of contempt for pomp and privilege. The enjoyable Pied Piper is here in full as is Rossetti's creepy classic of self-sacrificial sisterhood Goblin Market. Kenneth Grahame's Reluctant Dragon is funny if a bit pedestrian in its stereotype-breaking, and E.Nesbit's The Deliverers of Their Country shows her usual respect for children's ingenuity. Peter Pan, we find, was originally a tragic figure.

Apart from Nesbit and to a lesser extent Grahame, the authors featured in this book don't really attempt to use accessible language appropriate to a young audience. Their stories are often not about children, or they are about completely unrealistic children, who like Melilot do and say things no child ever would. All the expected nasty tropes are in here somewhere: heroes are perfect, beauty=goodness, the poor little lame prince is magically cured, wrongdoers are punished by the righteous and so on. Less useful as bedtime stories for kids than as material for research!

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains the stories listed below. I skipped the ones marked with *, because I had read them before. The ones marked with a +, I really liked, and the ones marked with a -, I couldn't finish, or it didn't really interest me. All in all this is a nice collection. It includes some reasonably well-known pieces as well as some obscure ones. It was interesting to finally read "Goblin Market" and see its influence on Lud-in-the-Mist.

*The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning
*The Rose and the Ring by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Magic Fishbone by Charles Dickens
"Melilot" by Henry Morley
*The Fairies: A Poem by William Allingham
+The Little Lame Prince by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
+The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde by Mary De Morgan
-The Golden Key by George MacDonald
"Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats
The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde
-The Brown Owl: A Fairy Tale by Ford Madox Ford
-Rocking-Horse Land by Laurence Housman
*The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame
+Deliverers of Their Country by E. Nesbit
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J.M. Barrie

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you do when you're in quarantine and can't go out? Pull this book of Victorian Fairy tales off the shelf and forget your troubles. This collection has an excellent introduction by Michael Patrick Hearn, and it includes both the old chestnuts as well as some less well-known but wonderful stories.

[Lois · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was not what I expected and such a fun read! I was mildly familiar with some of the fairy tales and didn’t at all know some of the others. They were all enjoyable though and some were outright hilarious.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful collection of fairy tales. I love fairy tales and hadn't read any of these other than "The Selfish Giant" (Wilde) and "The Deliverers of Their Country" (Nesbitt) before. So fun reading such varied stories using the beloved fairy tale tropes. It also includes fairy-ish poems such as Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" (beautiful)! While most were just very charming and droll, it ends with a sad Peter Pan tale that makes you think on the loss of innocent childhood and the security of having a loving mother. A sad return from fancy to reality. Great read!

[Nicholas (was Allison) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Notes: I really enjoyed reading this collection of older fairy tales. These are mostly classic fantasy stories, often with medieval settings in them. My favorite one was called The Brown Owl. I read this book over several months to pace out the time I had to read the stories. I would recommend this to anyone interested in older fairy tales.

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a wonderful anthology of fairy tales. I love the Victorian era, and this book provides a very interesting history on the resurgence of fairy tales in Victorian media. I was also suprised at the intricacy and sophisticated vocabulary in each story; compared to modern children’s stories they seem fairly mature in prose.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ended on an amazingly depressing note.

[Kbord · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been interested in folk tales and fairy tales for a while. This book was a bit of an intellectual exercise. I think I may have read one of the poems in it before for school. I'm not familiar with some of the authors, aside from not knowing that Charles Dickens ever wrote a fairy tale. It has a couple of stories that everyone has heard of but maybe never read, such as a poem of the Pied Piper, and J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" (like a prequel to the Peter Pan stories).

I haven't read through them all. It's not my favorite book ever, some of the tales are only so-so. But there are others I found myself eager to read through. So it's a bit of a hit-and-miss.

I did enjoy Ford Madox Ford's "The Brown Owl."

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting collection, featuring several stories I had never previously encountered. I found The Brown Owl to be of particular interest. It featured a complex, empowered heroine and surprising diversity, both of which I was pleased to see in a Victorian text. Altogether, an interesting read. I certainly want to continue with the Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library collection.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had been curious to reading fairy tales other than the usual Grimms and Andersen, and being interested in anything 19th century/Victorian, this book was exactly what I was looking for. I enjoyed some tales more than others, and liked reading stories for children written by authors I was used to writting for adults.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thoughtful collection of poems and tales that really embody the magic and morals that became the signature of fairy tales of the period. Who knew so many of the era's most respected writers of classic literature also wrote for children! This collection would be a wonderful addition to the personal library of anyone who loves fairy tales or loves the literature of the Victorian era.

[Jerrica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still reading this, but so far, the stories are great. A great addition to my fairy tale collection. :) A plus is that they're enjoyable for both kids and adults.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of Fairy Tales written by well-known 19th century authors and accompanying illustrations. The stories evoke a wonderful sense of place and whimsy.

[Betsy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this quirky collection of Victorian fairy tales--King of the Golden River, The Rose and the Ring, and many more.

[Aaron Theis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rather excellent compilation of Victorian Era Fairy Tales by the likes of Dickens, Barrie, Yeats, Wilde, Craik, and Barrie, to name but a few of the wonderful authors included in this collection.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like true(great story structure and writing, I don't mean factual, of course)fairy tales, you'll love this!