Old Peter's Russian Tales

On a freezing Russian night, two children nestle close as their grandfather Old Peter lights his pipe and begins to speak. So opens this legendary collection, first published in 1916, where the ancient art of the fireside tale comes alive. Arthur Ransome collected these stories firsthand during visits to Russia before the Revolution, and his versions retain the raw magic and moral weight of the oral tradition: the witch Baba Yaga with her iron teeth, the Little Daughter of the Snow who melted for want of love, the glittering fable of the Silver Saucer and the Transparent Apple. These are not sanitized nursery fare. They are the tales that Russian peasants told their children for centuries, dark and dazzling in equal measure, where the foolish are punished and the kindhearted rewarded, but not without cost. Ransome's frame narrative of Old Peter telling stories to his grandchildren Maroosia and Vanya gives the collection its warm, intimate pulse, transforming each tale into an act of inheritance. The book that launched Ransome's writing career remains, over a century later, one of the finest English-language portals into the Russian folk imagination.