I had an anthology of fairy tales, which I thought was called East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Whilst the format is very similar (girl traveling looking for something, told stories by the four winds), none of the versions I can find online match, so I may have the title wrong.
It definitely included the stories of:
- The 12 Dancing Princesses
- Long, Broad & Hawkeye (picture of a beautiful princess behind a curtain? one takes giant steps, one swallows a lake, one has a cloth covering his eyes)
- ?The Selfish Girl (little girl who gave away items, including a honeycomb and watermelon, but returned a little while later to demand them back)
- ?Something about watching a man sleeping and 3 drops of waxing dripping from the candle onto his chest.
The illustrations were beautiful but simple, maybe watercolour over ink lines. The characters were generally lithe with long, very straight hair.
It was a large book, with a picture on the front with a deep red/brown border around it. I would’ve been given it new somewhere between 1975-1985, in the UK.
Really hope you can help!
oooh, just remembered, I think the little mermaid was in there too….am remembering the pictures
The last story sounds like a version of Cupid and Psyche.
Apparently that bit pops up in a variety of beauty and the beast type stories.
The dripping wax detail is from the fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon, which is very similar to Cupid and Psyche (can’t remember if C and P also has the wax). I’m afraid I don’t know the specific anthology, though.
That is exactly the anthology that I’m looking for! It had a deep red cover, and I read it as a child in the mid-90s in California. What made it distinctive was that all the other stories in the anthology were told through the tale of “East O’ The Sun, West O’ The Moon;” namely, that the book started with the traveling girl, but every time that she found a different wind, they would have her sit and wait for their brother wind, and the stories were told by that wind as they waited. So the other fairy tales in the anthology were all told within the framework of the story of “East O’ The Sun, West O’ The Moon.” I’ve been looking for this book for YEARS and I haven’t been able to find its name! If anyone could help I would deeply appreciate it! Thanks!
I’m so glad that someone else remembers it! Was starting to think I had imagined it!
I’ve found it!!!!
I’ve just had a week at Hay-On-Wye – walked into Addyman’s, asked the lady on the counter about this book, and was directed to an alcove of fairy tales to have a search….it was the very first book I saw!
‘Around The World Fairy Tales’
Retold by STOVICEK, Vratislav.
Translated by Vera Gissing.
Illustrated by Zdenka Krejcova
Cathay Books, London, 1981
This is amazing. I thought of this book today and have been searching the internet but couldn’t find the right anthology. I’m lucky I came across this site and that the book I’ve been searching for has been “SOLVED”!