Helen mentioned in the comments of one of the posts about purchasing a book about fairies by Vladimir Propp. This was timely as I have been thinking about/searching for a book titled An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, & Other Supernatural Creatures by Katharine Briggs.
I discovered this book last week while listening to the podcast of Susanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman in which they discussed which books they used as reference for their stories. It turns out Susanna Clarke used this book in writing Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel and her short story collection. The book is out of print, but they have copies available on Amazon.com. The book is 480 pages of fantasy reference goodness.
Rather than purchase the book, I thought I’d check to see if they had it at my local library. Sure enough, they did. Now, my wife takes our daughter to this library every Monday, where a librarian reads a story to the kids and the kids get to play with the trains before and after. Seeing my opportunity, I explained to my wife the book and asked her if she could pick it up for me. I didn’t remind her about it on Monday, so I figured it wouldn’t happen.
Well, it’s Tuesday and I haven’t yet read An Encyclopedia of Fairies. This isn’t because my wife forgot. She actually took the time to find the book in the library (in the kid’s section?) and tried to take out the book. After some discussion, they told her the book was classified as reference material and could not be removed from the library. This seemed odd to me as the book is Number 1 fiction, and Number 2 probably not that much in demand as it has been in print for twenty-nine years. Oh well, I’ll just have to visit the library and take some notes/photocopies.
The librarian asked my wife why she wanted to take out such a book and she replied,”My husband is writing a novel with fairies in it and wanted the book for research.” This probably doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, but it was huge to me. To hear my wife say the words “my husband is writing a novel” to someone really makes me feel good, as if what I’m trying to to is legitimate.
Anyhow, I’ll check out the book in the next few days and let you know what I think. In the meantime, here’s the cover:
Filed under: Writing
RSS - Posts
Are you? As your wife has said in the library?
//And I agree: sometimes hearing what we ‘do’ from the mouth of another person somehow improves the whole thing, and raises it to a professional level.
SzélsőFa – I am going to try to write a novel that contains fairies. This will probably be my NaNoWriMo project.
whoo-hoo.
I got a book on Sleeping Beauty and one called “Tales of the Norsemen” out of the library today so I’m pleased with myself. I didn’t realise until today that this library has a whole shelf of fairy tale books. There aren’t any fairies in the book I’m writing but I’m using fairy tales for themes and structure. Oh, but there are some Norsemen, well sort of.
Maybe they will reprint the Encyclopaedia of Fairies. I bet people will want to read it now that Susanna Clarke mentioned that she used it as reference. I found a brilliant book in this other library I go to, a kids’ book on Norwegian Mythology and I couldn’t find it any bookshops and for some reason we couldn’t get it over the internet. Wah! My library won’t allow more than one renewal so I had to give it back… It’s a pity but it was very useful while I had it.
My husband tells people at his work that I’ve written a book. I wish he wouldn’t, though – it’s embarrassing!!
[...] other booky matters, I was able to track down a copy of the Encyclopedia of Fairies from the library the other day, and this library actually let me take it home. It felt pretty cool [...]
[...] also mentions using the Dictionary of Fairies by Katharine Briggs, which I have mentioned here before and have currently taken out of the library. At least I have [...]