Folklinks
Folk and Fairy-Tale Sites
© 1996-2020
compiled by
D. L. Ashliman
as a companion to
Folk
and Fairy Tales: A Handbook
Greenwood Press
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Mythology Electronic Texts.
The best tool for Internet research is not a comprehensive list of
favorite sites, but rather a repertory of a few efficient search engines
and reliable indexes, together with a basic understanding of how to use
them. The starting place for almost any Internet search is Google.
This site's use
of keywords is simple and efficient. Word groups set off by quotation
marks are treated as single units. Thus the search term "fairy
tales" will find only web sites containing that phrase, but not the
same words appearing separately. The keywords "little mermaid"
copenhagen will find sites containing Copenhagen and Little
Mermaid in any order, but Little Mermaid must appear as an
unbroken phrase. Google, like most search engines, is not case sensitive;
lower-case letters can substitute for upper-case ones, and vice versa.
Although Google is very thorough, one can usually locate further sites by
conducting the same search with additional engines. The following are
proven performers:
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Folktale and fairy-tale researchers should not overlook general
encyclopedias as sources for basic information about authors, collectors,
movements, genres, and the like.
The user-generated Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia
contains a wealth of information and is generally reliable.
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Online catalogs of large libraries are excellent sources of bibliographic
information about published folktale books. However, please note that
these catalogs do not provide access to the books themselves. The
following electronic catalogs are well designed and provide information
about immense collections:
- COPAC, a union
catalog combining the resources the largest university libraries in the
United Kingdom and Ireland plus the British Library.
- Library of Congress
. Of special interest at the Library of Congress is the Folklife
Sourcebook .
- Indiana
University Libraries. One of the world's largest folklore collections.
- Melvyl, the
online catalog of the University of California Libraries.
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Thousands of books and shorter pieces, many of them relevant to folk and
fairy-tale studies, are available gratis on the Internet as electronic
texts. The most comprehensive index of such texts in English is the
University of Pennsylvania's Online Books, which
currently lists over 20,000 titles. It also includes links to numerous
foreign-language electronic libraries.
To assist in finding a desired text among their thousands of listed
titles, Online Books includes a number of search tools. Two hints for
browsing:
- Search for the word fairy, folk, folktale, folktales, tale, or
tales in the title field.
Note that the search function uses only whole words, so a search for
tale will not find a title with the plural form tales.
- Browse in the subject-matter section under the Library
of Congress classification GR, folklore.
The Online Books data base is also available through the World eBook Library,
which includes links to a large number of reference works (dictionaries,
multilingual dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias), academic libraries
worldwide, and other research tools.
The Digital
Book Index combines and integrates the free books listed through
Online Books with commercial titles available for a fee. The
subject-matter search tool is very useful. A search under the category
"folklore, myths, legends, fables" yielded over 100 titles. This site
requires a sign-on procedure, but its use is without charge.
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Each of following electronic text libraries contains a substantial
collection of works relating to folk and fairy tales.
- Arthur's Classic Novels
includes numerous traditional and literary fairy tales, mostly borrowed
from other Internet sites then attractively reformatted.
- The Baldwin
Project, according to its mission statement, brings yesterday's
classics to today's children. It currently lists nearly 2,000 stories,
many of them folk and fairy tales. The site is indexed by grade level,
genre (including fables, fairy tales, and legends), book title, and other
categories. The texts are handsomely formatted and easy to read.
- Bartleby.com is
one of the pioneering electronic text sites. Its strong points include a
very useful search mechanism, a large collection of integrated reference
works, plus a good assortment of carefully edited classics.
- Bibliomania
lists more than 2,000 classic texts.
- Children's Books
Online (the Rosetta Project) is a large collection of illustrated
children's books, mostly from the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. The books are reproduced as single-page, full-color image
files, resulting in accurate and appealing replicas of the originals. An
added attraction are the text-file translations of many of the stories
into various languages.
- ClassicReader.com contains books
and short stories by more than 200 authors. The children's section
includes numerous collections of traditional fairy tales, and the
short-story section contains many literary fairy tales.
- The Electronic
Text Center at the University of Virginia is a pioneer in the editing
and distribution of electronic texts in various formats. Included in the
section for young readers are many folk and fairy-tale related items.
- Folktexts, compiled
and edited by D. L. Ashliman, University of Pittsburgh, offers a variety
of folklore and mythology texts, arranged in groups of closely related
stories.
- The Hockliffe Project
is centered around the Hockliffe Collection of early British children's
books held by De Montfort University in Leicester and Bedford, England.
The books are scanned into image files, rather than text files, yielding
exact replicas of each page.
- The Kellscraft Studio
specializes in illustrated books from the period 1890-1920, including many
fairy-tale collections. Take special notice of two books beautifully
illustrated by Blanche McManus: The True Mother Goose and Told
in the Twilight.
- The Perseus
Digital Library, sponsored by Tufts University, is an extensive and
well-engineered site combining images, texts, and scholarship. The
principal fields represented are Greek and Roman civilization and the
English Renaissance. Of special interest to students of folktales are the
fables of Phaedrus.
- Project
Gutenberg, begun in 1971, is the Internet's oldest producer of free
electronic books, and with over 6,000 online books is among the largest.
With the help of many volunteers the library is expanding at the rate of
about one new book per day. Project Gutenberg's text-only and easily
downloadable files are among the most carefully scanned and proof-read
digital texts available.
- Sacred
Text
Archive. This remarkable site's name does not say it all. In addition
to housing the scriptures of many religions, it contains mythology and
folklore texts from around the world. Each of the following topics,
selected from a list at the lower left side of the site's index page,
yields a number of folklore texts: African, Americana, Australia,
Buddhism, Celtic, Egyptian, England, Greek/Roman, Hinduism, Judaism,
Legends/Sagas (includes the Thousand and One Nights), Native
American, Pacific, and Tolkien.
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- Cinderella: A
Bibliography. A thorough and scholarly annotated bibliography of
texts, analogues, criticism, modern versions, parodies -- ranging from
ancient folklore through recent popular culture, modern scholarship and
pornographic films. Organized by Russell A. Peck, University of Rochester.
- Cinderella. A
selection of folktales of Aarne-Thompson type 510A and related stories
about persecuted heroines, edited by D. L. Ashliman.
- The
Annotated Cinderella, from the
SurLaLune Fairy Tales by Heidi Anne Heiner.
- Noodleheads. The
wisdom of fools in folktales.
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- A good place to begin research on the use of fairy-tale topics in film
and television is the Internet Movie Database.
- Tom
Davenport is an American filmmaker who has created a successful series
of short films placing familiar Grimm fairy tales in settings from the
American south.
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- Storyteller.net. A center for news,
essays, texts, and contacts for storytellers.
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- H. C. Andersen. Links
to Andersen's works in Danish. This site is sponsored by the Royal Library
(det Kongelige Bibliotek) of Denmark.
- H. C.
Andersen-Centret. A treasure trove of information from the H. C.
Andersen Center in Odense, Denmark. Click the British flag for an
English-language version of this site.
- Norske
Folkeeventyr, the Norwegian texts of 152 tales by Asbjørnsen
and Moe, sponsored by Project Runeberg.
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- Europäische
Märchengesellschaft. The European Fairy-Tale Society.
- Märchenlexikon, edited by
Kurt Derungs.
- Projekt
Gutenberg-DE. A massive German-language site sponsored by
the news magazine Der Spiegel and containing thousands of
electronic texts. Folk and fairy tale collections within the Projekt
Gutenberg-DE include:
- Sagen.at. A large
collection of legends and folktales, mostly from Austria, edited by
Wolfgang Morscher, University of Innsbruck.
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Revised October 27, 2020.