Grimm Tales by Philip Pullman

Published to mark the bicentenary of the first edition of the Grimm stories, this compilation of 50 tales represents, for Pullman, the best of the 200 or so that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first published as Children‘s and Household Tales in 1812.

Familiar tales, such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White, rub shoulders with lesser-known gems, all retold in Pullman’s distinctively vivid, clear and direct style. As he notes in his Introduction, “a fairytale is not a text” — it is an oral tradition passed down over the centuries, and subjected to constant modification and adaptation. So here we have a modern retelling that remains faithful to the events in the stories, but moves away from what Pullman calls the “rather ponderous old versions” and brings the language up to date.

He doesn’t shy away from some of the more shocking aspects of the tales, either. Some of them, he says, are “straightforwardly brutal”, such as The Juniper Tree, a macabre tale in which none of the gruesome details are spared. That might sound unsuitable material for a child, but the book’s cover proclaims it to be ‘for young and old’, and Pullman believes children are more accepting of brutality than we give them credit for. And nearly all the tales end happily ever after, with the good rewarded and the bad suitably punished.

At the end of each tale, Pullman puts it into literary and historical context, noting its source and tale type and mentioning other similar stories, making this not just an entertaining read but an enlightening one as well.

Grimm Tales by Philip Pullman is published by Penguin Classics, £20.