the stories are clever, wonderful, yet a bit predictable at times, while the illustrations are simply stunning and flawless. one of the best fairy tales collection i've read in a long time.
ILLUSTRATION O'clock: Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900–1931) "Old French Fairy Tales". She managed to illustrate 3 books before dying of tuberculosis.
Download the free book, here: http://archive.org/details/oldfrenchfairyta00sg
And see a gallery, here:
http://50watts.com/2293101/Old-French-Fairy-Tales
From 50watts: "Missouri-born illustrator Virginia Frances Sterrett (1900–1931) managed to complete just three books in her short life, all of them commissioned by the Penn Publishing Company: Old French Fairy Tales (1920), Tanglewood Tales (1921), and Arabian Nights (1928). She was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 19, around the time she received that first commission. David Apatoff wrote a lovely appreciation of her work and life at his Illustration Art."
It is difficult when reading a dominion free kindle book to judge some older works. You lack the charm of the illustrations which in some cases can totally change your view of the book. This kindle, a free classic, lacks the illustration and just presents the text. The fairy tales in this collection are very French and somewhat in the tradition of the French Salon stories. I say in the spirit because while all the characteristics are their there is a je ne sais quoi missing from them that exists in the stories of Mde d’Aubony or L’Heritier. Perhaps it is because all of the heroines are so blah and blonde and good and exactly like. Where the other Salon writers all have good heroines but in the great ones there is something different. The best tale, for me, in this collection was the story of Orison, he that looks like a bear, because why the character of Violette is almost like the other princesses that populate this volume, she sacrifices her beauty for him, loves him despite his ugliness, and he loves her when she becomes ugly. The two also remember a faithful servant unlike another member of their family. There is a rather interesting Cinderella variant in this collection.
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