The History of Fairy Tales

​The history of fairy tales can and has filled dozens of books – academics, writers and dedicated hobbyists have been researching the origins and evolutions of fairy tales for centuries. Below is a very minimalist overview of the broad trends and significant highlights of fairy tale history. For more detailed historical studies, see the suggested reading list below.

• Ancient world – Recent studies have suggested that some fairy tales that still exist today may have originated as long as 6000 years ago (i.e. 4000BC). To put that in perspective, many human cultures had domesticated plants and animals by then but metal tools were not yet widespread, and writing (among many other things) wasn’t yet invented. Early civilisations arose from around 3500BCE in Ancient Mesopotamia, 3000BC in Ancient Egypt, 2500BC in the Indus Valley and 2100BC in China.
• Classical Antiquity (Ancient Greece) dates from 800BC. There are several stories from Ancient Greece that could qualify as fairy tales, including The Golden Ass and Cupid and Psyche. ​The latter is thought to be the origin of the "Beauty and the Beast" ​fairy tale and has also influenced other fairy tales, including "East of the Sun and West of the Moon".
• Many of you will know that Cinderella is a fairy tale thought to have originated in China – the earliest tracing there is 850AD.

Although from ancient times until early modern history fairy tales were predominantly oral tales – people told these tales to each other and their families and friends - they have also had a place in written literature as it has developed - Chinese philosophers referred to them and writers like Shakespeare and Spenser had fairy tale elements in their works.

• In the late 1600s (1690-1710) the well-to-do French started rewriting some of these oral tales and writing new literary versions. The key figures were Madame d’Aulnoy and Charles Perrault.
• Perrault’s 1697 Histories or Tales of Times Past was subtitled Tales of My Mother Goose and it was very influential. It included Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, and Puss in Boots.
• Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose was translated into English in 1729. Some of the elements of Perrault's stories are still used today – for example, compare Perrault's version of Cinderella with her fairy godmother and pumpkin coach with the Grimms’s version in which Cinderella's mother gives her gifts from the tree grown over her burial mound.

 
Fairy tales were not originally specifically for children, but with the advent of the Age of Reason followed by the development of the Victorian sensibility,  the more vulgar content they contained began to be thought  improper and the fantasy content childlike; as childhood simultaneously began to be viewed as a time of innocence to be protected and the audience with the power to purchase was the increasingly proper middle-class, many of the original fairy tales were 'bowderlised' - material considered improper or offensive was removed.

• In 1812 and 1815 the Grimms’ Childhood and Household Tales ​were published. They contained such fairy tales as Little Red Cap, Cinderella, The Frog King, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
• The Grimms' fairy tales were translated into English in 1823.
• In 1835 Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales Told for Children was published. It contained both retellings of older stories, like the Princess and the Pea and The Wild Swans, as well as newly invented tales.
• Other collections were published in Norway, Russia, and other countries throughout this period.
• Two well-known British collections were:
  • Andrew Lang’s twelve fairy books, starting with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889 and ending with The Lilac Fairy Book in 1910 – Lang's fairy tale collections contained tales drawn from numerous sources and cultures
  • 1890 Joseph Jacob’s English Fairy Tales (contained the Three Little Pigs)
• With Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in 1937, Disney made the first of its many films which would have a long-lasting and influential impact on the cultural perception of fairy tales.

Suggested reading:

• Heiner, Heidi Anne. “Fairy Tale Timeline" (www.surlalunefairytales.com)
• Warner, Marina. Once Upon a Time: A Short History of the Fairy Tale. 2014.
• Zipes, Jack. Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture. New York: Viking, 1991. (Contains an introduction on the genre’s history).
• Zipes, Jack. The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales: The Western Fairy Tale Tradition from Medieval to Modern. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.
• Zipes, Jack. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm. New York: Norton, 2001.