Collectors' items: A partial and potted history of fairy-tale collections

In this essay, I explore the tradition of publishing collections of fairy tales, especially two key historical approaches to collections:

The tradition of publishing tales that are collected from and intended to express something of the folk heritage of a single culture (as exemplified by the work of the Grimm brothers), and;

the tradition of publishing works from a diverse range of cultural and folkloric traditions (exemplified by the Langs’ coloured fairy books), intended to showcase both the continuity of folklore as a narrative form, and the ‘exotic’ diversity of storytelling across a broad range of cultural settings.