Russian Fairy Tales - The Original Classic Edition (Paperback)

The stories contained in the following pages are taken from the collections published by Afanasief, Khudyakof, Erlenvein, and Chudinsky.

I had misgivings when I started this book, as it's as much more a book about fairy tales than a book OF fairy tales. But by the end I was totally won over, and am seriously considering reading more by W. S. Ralston.

It is set up so that there's a tale followed by a 'brief' (the author's word, not mine) discussion of the story's merits, meanings, possible origins and closest relatives, with many of those being summarized and discussed in turn. It's undeniably informative, and incredibly well-written; the more I read of it, the more I wanted to read of it.

The fifty or so tales included are well-told and interesting, and can be easily accessed from the active Table of Contents. Footnotes were included for further discussions and citations, and were all properly linked to throughout the text.

I have to recommend this book because I learned more about fairy tales than I ever thought there was to learn. A merry collection of folktales stretching from Murmansk to Ugolnyye Kopi. I enjoyed the simple 'Cinderella' stories and learned more about the culture than I ever hoped I would. Classic tales from Russia in the beautiful way told that I remember from Saratov summers on the Volga.