'The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales' by Nicholas Jubber

Fairy tales are beloved all over the world, by children and adults alike. They continue to be turned into blockbuster films, but they also continued to be told in the dark. I have adored fairy tales since I was a child but, being me, I always wanted to know more about them and their origin. And this is how I encountered The Fairy Tellers, a book full of tales that celebrates the act of telling. Thanks to Nicholas Brealey and NetGalley, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 5/3/2022
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey

Fairy-Tales are not just fairy-tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret history of fairy-tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them.

While there are certain names inextricably entwined with the concept of a fairy-tale, such as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the most significant tellers are long buried under the more celebrated figures who have taken the credit for their stories - people like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab and the Wild Sisters of Cassel. Without them we would never have heard of Aladdin, his Magic Lamp or the adventures of Hansel and Gretel.

Tracking these stories to their sources carries us through the steaming cities of Southern Italy and across the Mediterranean to the dust-clogged alleys of the Maghreb, under the fretting leaves of the Black Forest, deep into the tundra of Siberia and across the snowy hills of Lapland.

From North Africa and Siberia, this book illuminates the complicated relationship between Western civilization and the 'Eastern' cultures it borrowed from, and the strange lives of our long lost fairy-tellers.

Fairy tales were my bread and butter as a child. My mother had a collection of books with fairy tales from all over the world. The German fairy tales, as written down by the Grimm Brothers formed the backbone of my education, but it was enriched by fairy tales from Africa, Asia, and North America. It started a life-long obsession with the stories, which did much to inspire my love for medieval literature. But where do these stories come from? Why are they immediately recognisable and yet so hard to define? Where did fairy tales begin? These are the driving questions behind Nicholas Jubber's journey in The Fairy Tellers as well and I truly couldn't have asked for a better guide.

The Fairy Tellers tells the tale of six of the most influential people in the history of fairy tales, some well-known, others shamefully forgotten or actively hushed away. While not chronological, the journey through The Fairy Tales feels natural. First is Giambattista Basile, known for The Tale of Tales, or Lo Cunto de li Cunti. Nicholas Jubber brings to live the Neapolitan culture in the way Basile did himself in his tales. Basile wrote the first known version of tales which came to echo throughout countless childhoods, from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty, yet also beautiful oddities like The Flea with its spunky princess. Next is the tale of Youhenna (or Hanna) Diab, a man from the souks of Aleppo who, through countless adventures, finds himself in Paris during its obsession with A Thousand and One Nights, telling the tales of Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin to Antione Galland, who promptly took credit. His tales, specifically Aladdin, are so well known, and yet the man himself is a cypher. His autobiography was discovered in the Vatican Library, resurrecting him from history, and Jubber does his tale justice in The Fairy Tellers. The third teller is also from Paris, namely Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, whose fall from nobility to poverty inspired her many heroines, but specifically Belle in Beauty and the Beast. While the "beast-groom" story was already popular amongst the story-tellers of Paris, de Villeneuve wrote the tale which introduced the key elements we still know today, from the rose to the singing wardrobe. And she got exactly no credit for it for a very long time. 

Rather than focus on the Brothers Grimm entirely, Jubber dedicates his fourth part to Dortchen Wild, one of the young women who told them tales, most famously Hans and Gretel and Rumpelstilskin. Tracking her influence on the brothers, from the stories she told them to her marriage to Wilhelm, Jubber shines a light on a forgotten woman. From here we move further afield, to Ivan Khudiakov's rollercoaster of a life. Brilliant from childhood, he published his first collection of Russian fairy tales before the age of 22, but that's only where the rollercoaster starts. Khudiakov actually, unlike the Brothers Grimm, traveled through the land collecting and transcribing tales from "the common folk" and for him these tales were a crucial part of a potential revolution. This drive did not end well for him. From revolutionary Russia part 6 hops to medieval India and Somadeva's The Ocean of the Stream of Stories, or Kathasaritsagara. A beautiful collection that combines storytelling with mythology and religion, it is a major work by a mostly mysterious man. Not much is known about Somadeva, but Jubber brilliantly evokes Kashmir for the reader, allowing us to appreciate what an impact storytelling could have had. The Fairy Tellers ends with perhaps the most famous teller, Hans Christian Andersen. While he does not need to be rescued from obscurity, his life does demonstrate the saving grace of story telling like no other. Constantly searching for recognition and love, Andersen's stories create an entire world in which many of us have found a home. 

The Fairy Tellers ends with a rousing ode to fairy tales, with a strong emphasis on their beauty but also their grace. While fairy tales are hard to define, they share the trait of having to be told. A written fairy tale is different to one that is told, whether actively by a parent to a child or passively through a framing device. They must somehow forge a connection between two people, through the shared intimacy of a shared story. Nicholas Jubber shares his journey with us, showing us what he saw in Aleppo before it was bombed, how he commisserated with the abused statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen, and how Naples impressed him. The reader gets to travel with him and share in the stories he finds. The Fairy Tellers is almost like a fairy tale in that sense itself, full with a sense of magic and timelessness, and yet just odd enough here and there that you can't help but cock your head. His research and skill saves some of the above tellers from obscurity, at least for me, and made them as dear to me as the fairy tales they told themselves. And that is truly what a good story is meant to do, create a connection.

I give this book...

5 Universes!

The Fairy Tellers is a beautiful journey into the history of the telling of tales. Told with a genuine personal touch, Jubber's book is a must-read for any fairy tale lover like myself!