It was a good overview of the Fairy Tale and the genre/type up to the current day. It was an easy and short read, a very promising start to the A Very Short Introduction series. ( )

What it says on the tin: a short history of how fairy tales have been told, written, collected, adapted, and evolved; how they represent the nation’s/cultures they originated from; the sanitization that started long before Disney; how and why modern artists and audiences continue to interact and connect with these age-old stories. ( )

This may perhaps be more accurately described not as a history of fairy tale, but as a history of the ways in which people have thought about and related to fairy tales: as facets of a national identity, for instance, or as universal guides to human experience, or through the lens of psychoanalysis or feminism. It definitely is short, though, at 180 pages. But it packs a lot into those 180 pages, giving the interestingly paradoxical sense of an author thinking very, very deeply about the subject even while barely having time to scratch the surface of it. It may, perhaps, be a little bit dense, but it's never dry, and it's full of sharp observations, interesting insights, and compelling food for thought about a genre of storytelling so familiar that it's easy to take it for granted, but that seems to contain infinite possibilities for adaptation, interpretation, and engagement.

Fascinating stuff, and the sort of book it seems like one could come back to repeatedly and find new substance in. ( )

Many thanks to Oxford University Press for the ARC via NetGalley.

I thought this a charming and comprehensive guide through the multifaceted world of fairy tales. The writing is clean, confident, with numerous relevant examples and quotations provided. Due to its length, it naturally cannot cover all the minutiae of the extensive historical development of the genre, but provides instead a satisfactory overview of the major checkpoints on the way. As such, it makes for a reference book of some substance and authority, especially regarding some of the common themes in fairy stories, as well as some influential theories and literary practices in relation to the same.
The subject matter is approached from several different points of view, there are ample illustrations that supplement various points of argument, and the extremely extensive reading list at the end is a useful tool for anybody who considers this book a mere stepping stone on the way to more specified knowledge.
Personally, I particularly enjoyed the author's thoughts on how the existent corpus of fairy tales was explored in feminist theory and literature, and the focus on modern literary retellings in different media that not only completely transform the source material itself, but continue to redefine the genre and its functions even today. ( )