This is a golden treasury of over one hundred English folktales captured in the form they were first collected in past centuries. Read these classic tales as they would have been told when storytelling was a living art - when the audience believed in boggarts and hobgoblins, local witches and will-o'-the-wisps, ghosts and giants, cunning foxes and royal frogs. Find "Jack the Giantkiller", "Tom Tit Tot" and other quintessentially English favourites, alongside interesting borrowings, such as an English version of the Grimms' "Little Snow White" - as well as bedtime frighteners, including "Captain Murderer", as told to Charles Dickens by his childhood nurse. Neil Philip has provided a full introduction and source notes on each story that illustrate each tale's journey from mouth to page, and what has happened to them on the way. These tales rank among the finest English short stories of all time in their richness of metaphor and plot and their great verbal dash and daring.
Repackaged to feature Tolkien's own painting of the Tree of Amalion, this collection includes his famous essay, 'On Fairy-stories' and the story that exemplifies this, 'Leaf by Niggle', together with the poem 'Mythopoeia' and the verse drama, 'The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth', which tells of the events following the disastrous Battle of Maldon.
This is the definitive collection of Tolkien's five acclaimed modern classic 'fairie' tales in the vein of The Hobbit, fully corrected and reset for this edition and all beautifully illustrated in pencil by the award-winning artist, Alan Lee.