1st Edition
Silver Magic The World’s Best Fairy Tales Collected and Arranged by Romer Wilson
Preface - Jack Zipes
On Giants and Dwarfs - Romer Wilson
The Miraculous Pitcher - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Simmerwater: A Yorkshire Philemon - Anonymous
The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche - Apuleius
The Werewolf - Petronius
Eight Tales from Gesta Romanorum - Charles Swan
The Goose-Girl at the Well - J.E. Taylor (Brothers Grimm)
Clever Alice - J. E. Taylor (Brothers Grimm
Lohengrin - Anonymous
The Master-Thief - Anonymous
Boots and the Eating Match with the Troll - Asbjørnsen and Moe (Dasent)
How the Sea Became Salt - Anonymous
Finn MacCool and Future Events - F. R. Davies
Finn MacCool and the Giant
O’Donaghue’s Pigs - Anonymous
Davy Hanlan - Patrick Cody
Some Nonsense - Anonymous
The Twelve Dancing Princesses - Thomas Roscoe (Brothers Grimm)
Cinderella. or, The Little Glass Slipper - James R. Planché (Charles Perrault)
The Yellow Dwarf - James R. Planché (Mme d’Aulnoy)
Beauty and the Beast - James R. Planché (Mme Villeneuve )
Biography
Jack Zipes is Professor Emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. In addition to his scholarly work, he is an active storyteller in public schools and has written and translated fairy tales for children and adults. Some of his recent publications include: Grimm Legacies: The Magic Power of Fairy Tales (2014) and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: An Anthology of Magical Tales (2017). In 2019, he founded his own press called Little Mole and Honey Bear and has published The Giant Ohl and Tiny Tim (2019), Johnny Breadless (2020), Yussuf the Ostrich (2020), Keedle the Great and All You Want to Know about Fascism (2020), and Tistou, The Boy with the Green Thumbs of Peace (2021).
"Wilson’s playful paratexts and advice to readers that they must each discover the truth of a tale themselves make it evident that her priority is not presenting texts as a folklorist would but giving readers permission to engage them imaginatively on their own terms. After all, Wilson was not a scholar but a novelist—one possessing a mind that was not only erudite but also playful. Her diverse selection of fairy tales challenges and encourages readers to read the tales without the sober paratextual guidance of a conventional editor and to be dazzled by the imaginative words and worlds they encounter. In recovering Green Magic, Silver Magic, and Red Magic, Zipes gives Romer Wilson a chance to remind us that fairy tales are also about play."
--Donald Haase
