Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will hopefully know that I have a bit of a soft spot for fairytales. I find them fascinating – how they’ve evolved, which ones we remember, which ones fade into obscurity – I think fairytales are a real link between people, and show exactly what humanity places importance on, and how these things we place importance on change throughout the years and centuries, and which ones stay the same.
Recently, a collection of 500 fairytales has been uncovered. Gathered by historian Franz Xaver von Schonwerth, they were locked away for over 150, and only recently uncovered. You can read an article about it here.
Some of these stories are ones we have heard time and time again – Cinderella and Rumplestiltskin, for example, but many more of them are stories that have fallen out of our combined human consciousness. I wonder why? Is it because they were locked away for 150 years (it almost sounds like a fairytale in itself), or were those stories not as powerful as some of the ones the Grimms brothers collected, and that’s why they have been forgotten?
I am itching to get my hands on some of these new fairytales to see what sort adventures these princes, paupers, fairies, witches, and no doubt a whole lot of stock characters that aren’t even still part of fairytale stock anymore get up to. I wonder if some of these tales will now become part of our standard fairytale library – will they sit alongside Sleeping Beauty and Snow White in new collections of fairytales, or will they fade once again into obscurity? 
1001 Children's Books 
I remember reading that Guardian article, but then promptly forgot about it until now. Like you I hope that a translation is published soon.