Indian Fairy Tales
Joseph Jacobs, Indian Fairy Tales, London: David Nutt, 1892
xiv, frontispiece, 255 pages, several full-page illustrations by John D Batten; original pictorial boards
8.6 x 6.4 in (21.5 x 16 cm)
The author Joseph Jacobs was an Australian folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore.
He was what you might call a master of languages. Born in Australia and educated in London before arriving in the United States, Jacob took his worldliness to the next level by tackling stories written in Hebrew, Italian, French and Spanish and translating them into the English language. That act helped to preserve many of the fairy tales we know today, including ''Goldilocks and the Three Bears'' and ''Jack and the Beanstalk.''
Yet, that wasn't enough for the folklorist, a person who studies the folklore of various cultures. Jacobs was also inspired to compile a collection of stories from Indian culture which he named, appropriately, Indian Fairy Tales.
Preserved from the Indian culture, fairy tales compiled in this book are '"The Soothsayer's Son,'" '"The Talkative Tortoise'" and '"Why the Fish Laughed," among others. In the book's preface, Jacobs tells readers how he believes many of the more popular tales and writers we're accustomed to, including the works of the fable writer Aesop, have origins in Indian culture.
His work went on to popularize some of the world's best-known versions of English fairy tales including "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Goldilocks and the three bears", "The Three Little Pigs", "Jack the Giant Killer" and "The History of Tom Thumb". He published his English fairy tale collections: English Fairy Tales in 1890 and More English Fairy Tales in 1893[a] but also went on after and in between both books to publish fairy tales collected from continental Europe as well as Jewish, Celtic and Indian fairy tales which made him one of the most popular writers of fairy tales for the English language.
The illustrator John Dickson Batten (8 October 1860 - 5 August 1932), born in Plymouth, Devon, was an English painter of figures in oils, tempera and fresco and a book illustrator and printmaker. He was an active member of the Society of Painters in Tempera, with his wife Mary Batten, a gilder.
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