Cinderella; Or, the Little Glass Slipper, and Other Stories

The original Cinderella, before Disney softened her edges. This collection gathers the Perrault version (the one with the glass slipper, the one that ends with "they lived happily ever after") alongside other fairy tales that have faded from the cultural memory. They're stranger than you remember. They're better.Cinderella endures because she is not passive. She is quietly relentless, good-natured in a way that functions as a kind of stubbornness against her cruel household. The fairy godmother arrives, the coach is made from a pumpkin, the ball shimmers, and then comes the crucial moment: she runs. One shoe left behind. A prince hunts a kingdom. But Perrault's version carries a sophistication beneath its surface simplicity that most adaptations sand away. The other tales here venture into stranger territory: animals that outsmart humans, enchanted objects that exact terrible prices, children saved and lost and transformed. This is the raw material of fairy tale, before it was sanitized and strip-mined for merchandise. For readers who loved the stories as children and suspect there's more going on beneath the surface now.