Nicholas Jubber - The Fairy Tellers

Nicholas Jubber has travelled in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. He is the author of four previous books including The Prester Quest (winner of the Dolman Travel Book Award) and Epic Continent (shortlisted for the Stanford-Dolman Travel Book Award). He has written for numerous publications, including the Guardian , Observer , Globe and Mail , Irish Times and BBC History.

Acknowledgements

Im indebted to the many people who helped me in the research and writing of this book.

One of the most daunting aspects of researching The Fairy Tellers was attempting to breach the citadel of fairy tale scholarship, and I am grateful to the many experts who responded kindly to my questions and requests, helping me to better understand the lives and work of the fairy tellers who feature in this book.

I am particularly grateful to Nancy Canepa, who was always very encouraging and full of insights, exchanging material and thoughts about Giambattista Basile. In Italy, thank you to the members of the Accademia dei Dogliosi for welcoming me in Avellino, especially their president Dr Fiorentino Vecchiarelli. Also thank you to the actors Salvatore dOnofrio and Carmine Maringola for talking to me about their brilliant performance of La Scortecata.

In France, thanks to Thierry Vincent for talking to me about his production of Beauty and the Beast and sending me the play script. In Denmark, thank you to Dr Anne Klara Bom and Dr Ejnar Stig Askgaard. Thanks also to everyone at the Tivoli Theatre in Copenhagen, especially Peter Bo Bendixen and Peer. Thank you to the cast of Snedronningen for talking to me about Andersens tale and their roles in it, and to the staff of the Tivoli Theatre for additional support.

In Finland, thank you to my amazing host in Tampere, Ville Noroila, and his family (and thanks Larissa for the intro!), also thanks to everyone I met in Lapland. A huge thank you to Noora Barria at the SnowCastle in Kemi, and everyone there who answered my questions and gave me such an interesting experience, including a night at a snow hotel.

In Germany, thanks to Mirko Zapp and everyone at Grimmwelt in Kassel, the guild of the Hexensabbat in Waldkirch and the opera house in Giessen, in particular the opera director Moritz Gogg.

Among the many experts who gave me their time, I am grateful to Chirine el-Ansari, Hanan al-Shaykh, Gayathri Prabhu, Arshia Sattar, Brian Stableford, Bernhard Lauer, Sibelan Forrester, Robert Chandler and Jack Zipes.

I was fortunate to be given a months residency at the Jan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland, which was a great place to spend some time writing and thinking. I am very grateful to Vera Michalski-Hoffmann, Guillaume Dollmann, Chantal Buffet and everybody at the JMF, and also to my fellow writers Piotr, Ania, Jenny, Isabelle and Marina, whose company was always such a joy.

Thanks to Neil Walker for refreshing my memory of our lawn play from long ago (and for arranging the marvellous fairy tale tower on the college lawns!).

For help with translations, I am grateful to Marine Boussac-Maltby (French), Gerlinde Schermer-Rauwolf (German), Marina Skalova (Russian) and Nancy Canepa (Neapolitan).

For their suggestions and advice on early drafts of the book, I am very grateful for the feedback I received from Poppy Maltby, Jennifer Croft, Carrie Plitt, Nancy Canepa, Kate Forsyth, Gayathri Prabhu, Arshia Sattar, Sibelan Forrester and Ejnar Stig Askgaard.

This is my third book with John Murray and Id like to salute everyone for their work on it, including those whose endeavours will only become apparent after the book has gone to press. My editor, Joe Zigmond, has been an incisive and wonderfully challenging collaborator throughout this project, and I greatly appreciate his rigorous editorial input. Thanks also to Kate Craigie, to Rosie Collins for the design work, to Sara Marafini and the cover team, Rachael Duncan for publicity, and to Caroline Westmore and Hilary Hammond for their thorough and detailed work on the copy-edit, and to Judy Spours for her proofreading. Thanks also to my agent, Carrie Plitt, and everybody at Felicity Bryan Associates, who I hope will be giving this book lots of support as it goes out into the world.

Writing during a global pandemic was of course something of a challenge, but I couldnt have wished for a more supportive family, and Im grateful to my wife Poppy for all the encouragement she gives me, and to Milo and Rafe for everything theyve taught me, especially about dinosaur fossils, apparating spells and the technical specifications of Lego spaceships.

This book is dedicated to my brother and sister, Anne-Marie and Christopher, with whom I shared my first experiences of fairy tales and my first adventures into imaginary worlds. Thank you for every step we took together, and Im sorry if my love of such stories made my grip on the real world a little blurry at times.

Also by Nicholas Jubber

The Prester Quest

Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollahs Beard

The Timbuktu School for Nomads

Epic Continent

Bibliography

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