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Lead book review

The first fairy stories were never intended for children

Philip Hensher explores the origins of fairy tales

15 January 2022

9:00 AM

15 January 2022

9:00 AM

The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales Nicholas Jubber

John Murray, pp.336, 20

Stories are fundamental to humanity and no one can guess how far back they go — long before they were first recorded, no doubt. As Thomas Mann says at the beginning of Joseph and his Brothers:

The further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable.

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