Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups

Most people think of fairy tales as stories intended for children, but this is a relatively recent idea. For thousands of years, such tales were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike; and the earliest printed fairy tales in Europe were published for adult readers. These older versions of fairy tales were sensual, bawdy, unflinchingly violent, and morally complex.

It was largely during the Victorian era that tales were turned into children's stories, a trend reinforced by Walt Disney's animation. The banishment of the tales to the nursery abruptly changed in the 1970s for two primary reasons: Feminist fairy tale scholars began digging into the history of the stories and Angela Carter published her ground-breaking collection: The Bloody Chamber (1979). This set off a whole literary movement of writers re-working classic tales in wild, witty and wonderful ways. The Modern Revival of Adult Fairy Tales is still going strong almost fifty years later.

In this anthology, Terri Windling gathers together some of the best of the adult fairy tales published in the last five decades: stories in a range of moods and styles, dark and bright; horrific and funny; sensual, stark and startling.