The Fairy Tellers

The Fairy Tellers by Nicholas Jubber is a book that is specially significant to me. Because after many years I returned to University (University of Wolverhampton for those readers who are curious) and as part of my BA (Hons) in Creative and Professional Writing as part of my coursework I helped first year students with work they were doing on fairy-tales.

With that out of the way, please let me continue with the review of the book.

Far too many people are over eager to merely dismiss fairy tales as being only suited for children and whilst that is true, to a certain extent with some bowdlerised versions, the truth about fairy-tales is that they are often actually records of historical events. 

A careful reading of them (in context) can reveal something of how a civilisation was formed.

Nick Jubber (who you might have come across in his role as an award-winning travel writer) explores the backgrounds to the fairy-tales, their secret histories, the people who related them, the cultures in which they were formed and the landscapes that gave birth to them.

Readers will almost certainly heard of Hans Christian Anderson or the Grimm Brothers (or Brothers Grimm, if you prefer) in relation to fairy-tales. But Jubber calls attention to other tellers of fairy-tales who are long forgotten. I have to admit that I was unaware of the Wild Sisters of Cassel, or of the  Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab. 

In fact, had not Dortchen Wild told her stories to Wilhelm Grimm, it's almost certain that these stories would probably be unknown today. A very sobering thought.

Jubber traces the origins of fairy-tales to Italy, the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Forrest and even as far as the Siberian tundra and up into Lapland.

This will be a wonderful gift to anyone with an interest in fairy-tales from the academic to the person who recalls being told these stories as a child.

It is published by John Murray on Thursday 20th January.