‘Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov’, edited by Robert Chandler – review
From our UK edition
For the English-speaking world, the book that more than any other defines the magic — or fairy — tale is Children’s and Household Tales by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, first published in Germany in 1812, and translated (or adapted: it was seriously toned down) into English by Edgar Taylor in 1823. For the Grimms, as for other Romantic writers, these traditional tales were the repository of an authentic, national culture, under dual threat from industrialisation and invasion by Napoleon’s France. Educated Russian interest in folk traditions followed a similar trajectory: the first great Russian folklorist, Aleksandr Afanasyev, assembled his vast collection in the middle years of the 19th century.
