Fairy tales and folktales have long been mainstays of children's literature, celebrated as imaginatively liberating, psychologically therapeutic, and mirrors of foreign culture. Focusing on the fairy tale in nineteenth-century England, where many collections found their largest readership, National Dreams examines influential but critically neglected early experiments in the presentation of international tale traditions to English readers. Jennifer Schacker looks at such wondrous story collections as Grimms' fairy tales and The Arabian Nights in order to trace the larger stories...

An anthology of tales and original critical essays that moves beyond canonized "classics" and old paradigms.

Examines pantomime and theatricality in nineteenth-century histories of folklore and the fairy tale.

Examines pantomime and theatricality in nineteenth-century histories of folklore and the fairy tale.

The Routledge Pantomime Reader is the first anthology to document this entertainment genre—one of the most distinctive and ubiquitous in nineteenth-century Britain.