This book offers a new history of the fairy tale, revealing the creative role of periodical publication in shaping this popular genre. Sumpter explores the fairy tale's reinvention for (and by) diverse readerships in unexpected contexts, including debates over evolution, colonialism, socialism, gender and sexuality and decadence.
Author(s): Caroline E. Sumpter
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 266
Contents......Page 8
List of Illustrations......Page 10
Acknowledgements......Page 12
Introduction......Page 14
1 Serialising Scheherazade: An Alternative History of the Fairy Tale......Page 24
Antiquarianism, Romanticism, nationalism: The chapbook and the press......Page 28
Originals and counterfeits: Inventing the 'classic' fairy tale......Page 38
2 Myths of Origin: Folktale Scholarship and Fictional Invention in Magazines for Children......Page 47
‘Highmindedness and refinement’ versus 'cheap and nasty literature': Defining the middle-class juvenile monthly......Page 48
The Romantic child and recapitulation......Page 52
Max Müller, the Indo-European thesis and juvenile periodical fantasy......Page 55
‘Savage survivals’ and the fairy tale......Page 62
‘Life is the most beautiful fairy tale’: Class and gender fantasies......Page 65
Readers write back: Fairy tales and storytelling communities in Aunt Judy's Magazine......Page 75
3 Science and Superstition, Realism and Romance: Fairy Tale and Fantasy in the Adult Shilling Monthly......Page 80
The 'magic wand of language': Comparative mythology, Celticism and savagery......Page 81
Servants, sweeps and Cinderellas: Darwinian fairy tales......Page 88
Sleeping beauty and the prince's progress: 'The woman question'......Page 95
4 'I wonder were the fairies Socialists?': The Politics of the Fairy Tale in the 1890s Labour Press......Page 101
‘A precarious existence’: Strategies for survival in the 1890s socialist press......Page 102
The ideological contexts of reading......Page 105
Cinderella and socialism......Page 114
Evolutionary frameworks: Childhood, the fairy tale and rural utopianism......Page 118
Making socialists......Page 126
New tales from old: Context and meaning......Page 128
‘Joining the crusade against the giants’: Keir Hardie, child readers and interactive fairy tales......Page 131
5 'All art is at once surface and symbol': Fairy Tales and fin-de-siècle Little Magazines......Page 144
‘Too highbrow to be popular’: Little magazines, elitism and commerce......Page 145
Beauty and use: Arts and Crafts and the fairy tale......Page 148
Innocents and epicures: Decadence, Symbolism and the child......Page 153
Alternative masculinities: The fairy tale and coded gay discourse......Page 169
Conclusion: Myth in the Marketplace......Page 188
Abbreviations Used in Notes......Page 192
Notes......Page 193
Bibliography......Page 233
A......Page 252
B......Page 253
C......Page 254
E......Page 255
F......Page 256
G......Page 257
H......Page 258
J......Page 259
M......Page 260
P......Page 262
R......Page 263
S......Page 264
T......Page 265
W......Page 266
Z......Page 267
