The Watkins Book of English Folktales

De: Neil Philip, Neil Gaiman - foreword

Narrado por: Hannibal Hills

With a foreword by Neil Gaiman, this comprehensive, entertaining, and authentic collection of English folktales is perfect for fans of Madeline Miller, Philip Pullman, and the Brothers Grimm.

This is a golden treasury of over one hundred English folktales captured in the form they were first collected in past centuries. Listen to these classic tales as they would have been told when storytelling was a living art—when the audience believed in boggarts and hobgoblins, local witches and will-o'-the-wisps, ghosts and giants, cunning foxes and royal frogs. Find "Jack the Giantkiller", "Tom Tit Tot", and other quintessentially English favorites, alongside interesting borrowings, such as an English version of the Grimms' "Little Snow White"—as well as bedtime frighteners, including "Captain Murderer", as told to Charles Dickens by his childhood nurse.

Neil Philip has provided a full introduction and source notes on each story that illustrate each tale's journey from mouth to book, and what has happened to them on the way. These tales rank among the finest English short stories of all time in their richness of metaphor and plot and their great verbal dash and daring.

©1992, 2002 Neil Philip; Foreword Copyright 2022 by Neil Gaiman (P)2023 Tantor

Some of the tales are very interesting.

Some of the tales are really interesting, some are utter nonsense. the research bits are... well, dull. I'm glad I read this, but would hesitate to do so again.

and skip the introduction of you do. I thought it might get better. it did not.

Difficult to Differentiate Characters

There was too much emphasis on characterizing the different narrators that provided the stories in the collection that it was nearly impossible to tell the characters apart within the tales themselves.

I can see the value as a collection of stories, but it was possibly the worst audiobook I have listened to. Stick to the text version if you're able to.