Anne Anderson's Old, Old Fairy Tales
Old, Old Fairy Tales by Anne Anderson
This picture book (just 20 pages with rigorously shortened stories) is a collection of shortened classic fairy tales, dominated by stories from the collection of the Brothers Grimm. It was published by Whitman Publishing Company, Racine, Wisconsin, USA in 1935.
It's not clear when the illustrations were made but here signature touch with an influence of Art Nouveau is obvious. Strong colors, many details, and decorative borders are clear examples of her work.
The front cover of the book features the scene from Goldilocks (often titled The Goldilocks and Three Bears) where the family of bears returns home and finds the intruder in one of their beds.
The Swan Princess is more known as The Six Swans, a fairy tale by Jacob and William Grimm. It tells a story about a girl who has to go through great dangers to rescue her brothers, who turned into swans.
Briar Rose, widely known as The Sleeping Beauty, is another classic from the Grimm collection. The story of a girl who is punished for her father's mistake with a hundred years of sleep until a Prince Charming rescues her is still among the most lovable.
Beauty and the Beast is not only one of the tales which don't belong to the collection by the Brothers Grimm, but it's also a story with a known author (Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont), although it's actually an echo of an old myth (or several myths).
It's always interesting to compare how different illustrators present the Beast. In this case, Mrs. Anderson decided to give him the look of some kind of giant reptile with a lot of tiny details, as expected of her style.
The Three Dwarfs (in the Wood) or The Three Little Men belong to Grimms. We have a classic situation with a daughter and stepdaughter, an incompetent father, and a wicked stepmother. The daughter is given an impossible task but finds her way to return home as a rich girl and her stepmother got an idea to make her own daughter rich too.
Of course, we all know how such plans pan out. A classic moral with many similarities to other fairy tales, like Diamonds and toads by Charles Perrault, for instance.
Frog Prince is today better known as Frog King and the scene at the fountain or the pond is by far the most popular one among illustrators. It's packed with symbols, from the golden ball to the frog and the relationship between the frog and the princess which changes through the tale.
Anne Anderson used an opportunity to add many tiny details as we should expect from Art Nouveau.
Again, well-known fairy tale, probably the most popular one in the world. Origins of Cinderella or Little Glass Slipper can be traced at least two thousand years back in history and it seems we'll never get bored of the story about a girl who lost everything but her spirit.
Charles Perrault ended the story as an opportunity to forgive but Jacob and especially William Grimm saw it as a chance for bloody revenge. Today Perrault's version is way more popular but we can never be sure that that can't change soon.
Rapunzel is another classic story about a damsel in distress, sharing its elements with Briar Rose and Rumpelstiltskin (incompetent father, captivity, magical enemy, ...). Heroine's long hair is one of the most well-known characteristics of all fairy tale characters in the world.
Hair was considered a bearer of magical powers (just think about Sampson) in many cultures and, if we think a bit, still is with millions of ladies spending a fortune for their hairstyle and men trying to avoid baldness.
Rumpelstiltskin is another variation of another old superstition - little people, living in the wood, praying for children, and luring them into the fairy world. It starts whit a miller claiming that his daughter can spin straw into gold, putting his only child in deadly danger.
The girl got an unexpected helper but this comes with a price. she has to give her only child to the little man who can do exactly what was expected from her - spin straw into gold. They stroke a bargain. She can keep the child if she guesses his name. The picture above shows the man dancing around the fire and singing about his strange name expecting he'll get the kid.
Rumpelstiltskin (just like Briar Rose and Rapunzel) was also illustrated by Anne Anderson in Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, in this case, titled The Millers Daughter (the Scottish version of the same story with the same plot).
Mother Holle aka Mother Hulda, another fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm is a story with a very similar plot and message as the tale Three Dwarfs in the Wood: good deeds are rewarded and bad behavior punished. There are also two daughters and a wicked stepmother. The ending is almost the same.
Brothers Grimm firmly believed that fairy tales should teach about the proper behavior of children as they are growing up and learning about life as it should be, not as it was.
This fairy tale comes from Perrault's Mother Goose and tells a story about poor kids who were led by the youngest who got involved in a conflict with a giant. They escaped and stole his seven-mile boots, acquiring a magical object which enabled the family to earn enough money to escape their poverty.
While we mentioned Perrault for the third time it's probably right to invite you to check how Harry Clarke portrayed some of the very same (or their variations) stories in Perrault's Fairy Tales.
This illustration of Hansel and Gretel meeting the man-eating witch comes from the back cover of the picture book presented above. We all know what happens next, but this should not stop us to review the whole story, first changed into opera by Engelbert Humperdinck with libretto by Adelheid Wette, just another vision of one of the immortal classics in Hansel and Gretel, illustrated by Maria Louise Kirk.
In this article, you can further explore Anne Anderson's illustrations.
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