Book Description
"We cannot imagine the most indifferent reader laying the book down without a desire to know more," wrote a reviewer of the original edition in 1888. In the years since, our fascination with these early works of the human imagination has only grown.
Product Description
This classic study of popular tales and fictions is a global map of human imagination reaching back to a time that the author calls "the childhood of the world."
First published in two volumes more than a century ago, the book traces familiar themes from strikingly different times, places, and cultures: invisible caps and cloaks, shoes of swiftness, inexhaustible purses, gold-producing animals, life tokens, bird maidens, forbidden rooms, fairy hinds, magic barks, thankful beasts, and magical transformations. The author investigates their origins, examines their variations, and follows their migration from one culture to another. Editor Christine Goldberg brings this classic up to date with an introduction that evaluates and expands the original work in the light of current scholarship.
