'The dwellers in Australian Fairy Land, although akin to those of other climes, have a distinct character of their own. Even the wicked Desert Fairies endear themselves to us. Although they do not vomit fire, as did the dreadful dragon of our childhood, one feels that, given a sporting chance, they would make that boastful beast curl up like a salted worm'.
'This article examines three collections of Australian fairy tales published between 1897 and 1925 and considers the ways in which they contributed to nation-building efforts. Atha Westbury’s Australian Fairy Tales (1897), J. M. Whitfeld’s The Spirit of the Bush Fire and Other Australian Fairy Tales (1898), and Hume Cook’s Australian Fairy Tales (1925) fantasise a nation into being through the fairy-tale genre. The associations of the European fairy-tale tradition with a distant past (‘once upon a time’) are mobilised to create a ‘ready-made’ set of traditions and cultural explanations through which the implied Australian child can understand a nation that was only federated in 1901. This ranged from creating origin stories for natural landmarks like J. M. Whitfeld, through to imagining well-developed fairy cities in the most isolated parts of Australia, far from the eyes of white settlers, as in Atha Westbury and Hume Cook’s collections. Stories by Cook and Westbury blur the distinction between fairy-tale characters and First Nations people, at once yoking imported traditions to the enduring history of First Nations peoples and replacing them in the cultural imaginary with mythical characters who have never existed.' (Publication abstract)
'Most of us grew up reading fairy tales adapted from the European tradition: stories of kings, queens and princesses set in palaces and forests, such as Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast. But what about the history of Australian fairy tales?'(Introduction)
'This chapter explores the shifts between historical and contemporary fairy tale writing and editing. In first considering colonial-era publications, the chapter describes the ways that narratives appropriated from Indigenous culture were framed within a colonial and Western European concept of fairy tale collecting, how experiences of migration were reflected in colonial-era fairy tales, and how early white storytellers attempted to use fairy tales to create an always-already-colonised history of the Australian continent. The chapter then explores how these early traditions have shifted in the (post)colonial context of contemporary writing and publishing, with a move away from editing and publishing Indigenous narratives within a fairy tale context, a more complex approach to using fairy tale characters and stories to explore experiences of migration, and a strong growth in feminist revisionist fairy tales. The chapter argues, finally, that while few works have taken up Donald Haase’s challenge to decolonise fairy tale studies and practice, those that have offer a vision of a uniquely and startlingly Australian mode of transcultural textual production.'
Source: Abstract
'Most of us grew up reading fairy tales adapted from the European tradition: stories of kings, queens and princesses set in palaces and forests, such as Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast. But what about the history of Australian fairy tales?'(Introduction)
