The stories were compiled by German historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth in the 1880s – around the same time as the Brothers Grimm folk tales – from across the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz.
While the well-known Grimm fairytales often feature a vulnerable princess and dragon-slaying hero, Schönwerth reverses their roles – offering readers powerful female and vulnerable male characters.
In Schönwerth’s fantastical version Cinderella, for example, the heroine uses her golden – not glass – slippers to rescue her lover from beyond the moon.
yoooooooooo omg
Not so happily ever after: Fairytales that lay undiscovered for 150 years tell stories of wicked step-fathers witch-slaying princesses and scared young princes
Published
The Carving Witch 