Tales of Wonder

Retelling Fairy Tales through Picture Postcards

2017
Author:

Jack Zipes
Foreword by Marina Warner

A pictorial history of fairy-tale postcards throughout the world over two hundred years

A pictorial history of fairy-tale postcards from the late 1800s to the present, Tales of Wonder presents a fascinating look at how key scenes of fairy tales have been rendered over time, suggesting a rethinking and reliving of the tales through the years. Jack Zipes tells this intriguing history of the postcards as well as providing new perspectives on familiar stories.

This highly illustrated volume offers a historic chapter in the cultural story of fairy tale as a shared symbolic system. Jack Zipes is the most learned and indefatigable historian and polemicist of fairy tale as a cultural phenomenon, and he has always been alert to the technologies of the stories' circulation.... The speaking pictures Jack Zipes has archived here will never be repeated in this form again, as the stories migrate and come to inhabit new vehicles, new technologies of enchantment.

Marina Warner, from the Foreword

The most familiar fairy tales call to mind certain images: Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty. Yet these visions often merely reflect illustrations encountered in classic tellings of the tales. The postcards gathered here by one of the world’s foremost scholars of folk and fairy tales tell another story—of the remarkable range of interpretations and reimaginings these tales have inspired, captured, and conveyed picture by picture in this singular form. A pictorial history of fairy-tale postcards from the late nineteenth century to the present, Tales of Wonder presents a fascinating look at how key scenes of fairy tales have been rendered over time, suggesting a rethinking and reliving of the tales through the years.

Drawn from the author’s collection of more than three thousand fairy-tale postcards from around the world, these five hundred beautiful illustrations reproduce oil paintings, watercolors, photographs, ink drawings, and silhouettes—all evincing the myriad ways popular artists and their audiences have reimagined these tales. After an introduction and general history of fairy tales in postcards, the book features Jack Zipes’s own translations of the most classical fairy tales in Europe and the United States, including versions by Charles Perrault and by Brothers Grimm.

The fairy tale is not just once upon a time: it is, as fairy-tale postcard, a particular if not peculiar expression of a time, created by talented artists and innovative publishing companies. Tales of Wonder tells this intriguing history of the postcards as well as providing new perspectives on familiar stories.

Jack Zipes is professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. He is an active storyteller in public schools and has worked with children’s theaters in Europe and the United States. He is author of more than forty books, including The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World; Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales; and Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry.

Marina Warner writes fiction, criticism, and history. She received the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

This highly illustrated volume offers a historic chapter in the cultural story of fairy tale as a shared symbolic system. Jack Zipes is the most learned and indefatigable historian and polemicist of fairy tale as a cultural phenomenon, and he has always been alert to the technologies of the stories' circulation.... The speaking pictures Jack Zipes has archived here will never be repeated in this form again, as the stories migrate and come to inhabit new vehicles, new technologies of enchantment.

Marina Warner, from the Foreword

A veritable treasure trove of new imagery.

SurLaLune Fairy Tales Site

The illustrated cards are stunners, both for their vivid colors and their detail.

Star Tribune

Highly recommended for fairy tale enthusiasts, this beautifully produced book sheds light on an overlooked vehicle for the dissemination of fairy tales around the world.

Library Journal, starred review

Zipes is a formidable academic but he also has the populist touch when it comes to communicating the value of these tales and he is responsible for rediscovering and translating global wonder stories that would otherwise be lost to the world.

The LetterPress Project

CONTENTS
Foreword Writer’s name
Introduction
Telling an Unknown History of the Fairy Tale Postcard
Early Fairy Tale Postcards and the Art of Storytelling
The Tales
Classical Tales
Little Red Riding Hood
Little Tom Thumb/Hansel and Gretel
Cinderella
Snow White
Sleeping Beauty
Puss in Boots
The Pied Piper
Rip Van Winkle
a Mélange of the Brothers Grimms
stories by hans Christian andersen
Russian Fairy Tales
Fairy Tale Novels
Alice in Wonderland
Pinocchio
The Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan
a Global Cornucopia of Fairy Tale Postcards
The Art
Photography series
art series
epilogue: The art of Retelling Tales
Bibliography