WOMEN AND FAIRY-TALES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."
SIR,—In connexion with the subject of women and fairy-tales, may I point out that the brothers Grimm did not invent the stories published in their name ? They collected them from the peasantry, and it is at least as likely as not that the tales were invented and embellished by women as by men. Jane Austen (that greatest of realists and most supreme of artists) was a teller of delightful fairy-stories, which, however, neither she nor her hearers ever troubled to set down. Women have not been, in the past, sufficiently self-conscious (as a body) to work for a larger audience than that about their knees. I begin to think it a duty for every woman who has ever held a roomful of children spellbound with a tale of fairy wonder to set her fancies down on paper for the benefit of posterity.—I
16 Ryde Vale Road, S.W.
RS.—It is a curious fact that Hans Andersen was not fond of children, and many of his stories do not appeal to them; they are too difficult and too sad.
[It is also true that Hans Andersen was not at first fond of his own fairy-tales. He was proud of some indifferent novels, but could hardly be persuaded to set down the tales which had entranced his audiences of children.—En. Spectator.]
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