Audiobook · read by volunteers
English Fairy Tales
Joseph Jacobs (1854–1916)
Read by Joy Chan · 44 chapters · 5 h 35
About the book
Jack and the beanstalk, Tom Thumb, the Three Little Pigs, the Three Bears, Jack the Giant Killer: here are many of the traditional tales that English children have grown up with, collected and retold by Joseph Jacobs in a lively, spoken style.
The stories are short, quick and full of repetition, rhythm and rhyme, which makes them perfect for listening aloud. There are giants and witches, foolish husbands and wise wives, clever animals, and magic that works in the most unexpected ways.
Forty-four sections, about five and a half hours. A treasury for children and adults alike, and a lovely way to meet again the stories that shaped a tradition. Their plots are simple and their rhythms strong, with refrains that listeners can join in. Some are funny, some a little frightening, and many will feel strangely familiar. They are best heard aloud, a few at a time, and they have been loved for well over a century.
Introduction
Joseph Jacobs (1854-1916) was an Australian-born folklorist and historian who spent most of his career in England and later in the United States. He edited collections of Jewish, Celtic, Indian and English tales, and his English Fairy Tales, published in 1890, is among the best known. A second volume, More English Fairy Tales, followed in 1894.
Jacobs set out to do for English folk tales what the Brothers Grimm had done for German ones: to gather the stories that had been passed down orally and offer them to children in a form that kept their living voice. He chose to write in a simple style close to how the tales would have been told aloud, retaining their dialect words, rhymes and refrains. He drew on earlier printed collections and on stories collected from storytellers, and the book ends with notes on their sources and parallels.
The collection includes many of the most famous English tales, such as Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, and Tom Tit Tot, a version of the Rumpelstiltskin story. The original edition was illustrated by John D. Batten, whose drawings helped to fix the visual image of the stories for generations of readers.
This recording consists of forty-four sections, a preface followed by the tales, and lasts about five and a half hours, read by a LibriVox volunteer. Because each story is brief and self-contained, it can be enjoyed a few at a time. It is a lovely choice for bedtime listening and a wonderful resource for storytellers.
Public domain
Joseph Jacobs died in 1916: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text