The Fairy Tale Fiction of Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie
edited by myself for the SurLaLune Fairy Tales line is now $2.99 for the ebook format. The
paper edition
is still $24.99.
Here's the description:
FAIRY tales have long been an important part of the world's history and literature, especially for women whose voices have often been trivialized, ignored or made anonymous. Old wives' tales, fairy tales, and folklore-whatever terms are chosen-are part of our earliest literature and have often provided the medium for women's voices, for women's stories. Like the women of the French Salons who used traditional stories to create and recreate tales that both inspired and criticized their world and its expectations, women writers have long been recording and rewriting fairy tales for their own generations. The practice continues up to current times and will easily continue on past our own generations into a distant future.
One such author from the Victorian era was Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. Ritchie rewrote nine fairy tales into short stories and novellas, exploring and reinterpreting the tales for the audience of her time. She wasn't the first to do so--and certainly not the last--but she firmly belongs in this literary legacy, one in which she has all too often been overlooked.
Edited with a new introduction by Heidi Anne Heiner, this volume includes Anne Thackeray Ritchie's nine short stories and novellas from Five Old Friends and Bluebeard's Keys and Other Stories: "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Jack the Giant-killer," "Bluebeard's Keys," "Riquet á la Houppe," "Jack and the Bean-stalk," and "The White Cat."
Additional materials include Ritchie's introduction to The Fairy Tales of Madame D'Aulnoy and "Bluebeard's Ghost" by William Makepeace Thackeray, Ritchie's father.
There are a few variations of this book available since it is primarily a compilation of old texts, but this one has been carefully scanned and edited from the originals and also offers my introduction about Ritchie, fascinating woman that she was. This is also the first collection to focus on her fairy tale explorations, at least to my knowledge and I've done some research.
Ritchie's retellings are particularly interesting to me because she set them in modern times--at least her modern times, meaning Victorian times--instead of the pseudo fairy tale settings so many retellings from the past would use. She also shies away from magical elements, but still uses the source materials in fascinating ways.
