In these two classic collections, first published in 1890 and 1894, Joseph Jacobs combined folklore, children's literature, and the eclectic scholarship of the Victorian era to create a storehouse of tales that inhabited the imaginations of children and adults for generations. Here readers first met Tom Tit Tot, Molly Whuppie, and Jack the Giant-Killer, and first read the stories of the Three Little Pigs, the Three Bears, and Henny-Penny.

Jacobs' daring collections challenged conventional thinking about the meaning of "folk," the individual artistry behind folktales, and the boundaries...

This classic study of popular tales and fictions is a global map of human imagination reaching back to a time that the author calls "the childhood of the world."

First published in two volumes more than a century ago, the book traces familiar themes from strikingly different times, places, and cultures: invisible caps and cloaks, shoes of swiftness, inexhaustible purses, gold-producing animals, life tokens, bird maidens, forbidden rooms, fairy hinds, magic barks, thankful beasts, and magical transformations. The author investigates their origins, examines their variations, and follows...

In 1891, at a time when the study of India was primarily based on ancient texts, coins, and material remains, William Crooke dared to focus on "living" India--its everyday culture, age-old customs, and fictional narratives. With Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube, he recorded and published, over a period of six years, a remarkable collection of folktales from northern India.

The tales reflect the tapestry of social and personal lives of this region, the epicenter of a revolt against British rule in 1857. Although many of the tales were published in British ethnographic journals, a number of the...

For 19th-century folklorist Thomas Crane, the value of collecting, translating, and reproducing folktales lay in their "internationalism"--their capacity to reveal how the customs of a particular group, no matter how unique, are linked to many others.

In his classic collection, edited and updated by contemporary folklorist Jack Zipes, Crane traces the roots of Italian folktales to their origins, often in the Orient, then shows how they diffused in unpredictable and marvelous ways throughout Italy and over the centuries. A contemporary of the brothers Grimm, Crane offers a richer, more...

Gaston Maspero is a towering figure in Egyptology. "Popular Stories of Ancient Egypt" offers a wealth of primary data and authoritative commentaries on ancient Egyptian culture, language, history, society, and ethnic groups as depicted in Egyptian and Greek-Egyptian narratives. The work provides the contextual data necessary for understanding the tale-texts and reflects Maspero's deep knowledge of many fields, from the classics to life in modern Egypt.

This new edition includes a contemporary foreword, which introduces Maspero and describes his scholarship. It also provides, for the...