Bookgazing's Fairytale Feature - Find Free Fairytales

[bookgazing]

There are quite a few places to find free online versions of fairytales, folklore, myths and legends. The university of Pittsburgh has compiled a long list of complete texts of folk tales called 'Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts' . This month I’ll be reading the Charles Perrault version of 'Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper' , they’ve put online and various other versions of the Cinderella story they’ve made available.

The World Digital Library has stories by Hans Cristian Anderson online. It requires a bit of zooming and fiddling about with to make it easier to read but the whole text is there.

Project Gutenberg has Grimm's fairytales available for free download.

If I read a tale of folklore, fairytale, myth or legend that isn’t available at one of these sources I’ll try my best to find a free online version you guys can read.

Now to read along with me this month just take ten minutes to peruse Charles Perrault’s 'Cinderella'. Perrault is credited with creating the first European version of the story and is widely available in English, which is why I’m using his version as the ‘original’ tale. Once you’ve read the story leave your thoughts as a comment on this post. You might write about:

Which bits of the story you were already familiar with and which bits seemed different from the fairytale you remembered

If you liked or disliked this story

How this traditional take might apply to our current society

If you want to read multiple versions of the story please do – the more versions the better. You can leave comments about those tales here as well.

Next: Tomorrow I give you my more informed impressions of Charles Perrault’s ‘Cinderella’.

Oh and look we have a button for stealing now :)