The Fairest of Them All: Snow White and 21 Tales of Mothers and Daughters

ÒWith her trademark brio and deep-tissue understanding, Maria Tatar opens the glass casket on this undying story, which retains its power to charm twenty-one times, and counting.Ó
_Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked

The story of the rivalry between a beautiful, innocent girl and her cruel and jealous mother has been endlessly repeated and refashioned all over the world. The Brothers Grimm gave this story the name by which we know it best, and in 1937 Walt Disney sweetened their somber version to make the first feature-length, animated fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Since then, the Disney film has become our cultural touchstone_the innocent heroine, her evil stepmother, the envy that divides them, and a romantic rescue from domestic drudgery and maternal persecution. But each culture has its own way of telling this story of jealousy and competition. An acclaimed folklorist, Maria Tatar brings to life a global melodrama of mother-daughter rivalries that play out in unforgettable variations across countries and cultures.

ÒFascinatingÉA strange, beguiling history of stories about beauty, jealousy, and maternal persecution.Ó
_Wall Street Journal

ÒIs the story of Snow White the cruelest, the deepest, the strangest, the most mythopoeic of them all?ÉTatar trains a keen eye on the appeal of the bitter conflict between women at the heart of the taleÉa feast of rich thoughtsÉAn exciting and authoritative anthology from the wisest good fairy in the world of the fairy tale.Ó
_Marina Warner

ÒThe inimitable Maria Tatar offers us a maze of mothers and daughters and within that glorious tangle an archetype with far more meaning than we imagine when we say ÔSnow White.ÕÓ
_Honor Moore

ÒShocking yet familiar, these storiesÉretain the secret whisper of storytelling. This is a properly magical, erudite book.Ó
_Literary Review