The Long Eighteenth Century
Fairy Tales, Pt. 4 Madame d’Aulnoy Coins the Term “contés de fees”(fairy tales)
As best I can tell, Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness[1] d’Aulnoy (1652-1705) led a wild life. At the age of 13, she was married to the Baron d’Aulnoy, who was a “freethinker,”[2] a gambler, and thirty years her senior. Three years and three children later, her husband was accused of treason. The accusations were…
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Fairy Tales, Pt 2: Antoine Galland and the Arabian Nights
When I sat down to write about Charles Perrault and Tales of Mother Goose, I had no intention of writing more about the writers who “created” fairy tales as we know them . But as I wrote about Perrault I remembered some of my favorite stories,[1] and stumbled across a new one. Suddenly a small…
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Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Kathryn Gehred
Kathryn Gehred has a master’s degree in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College and was part of a team of editors who completed The Papers of Martha Washington, a transcribed collection of all of Martha Washington’s known correspondence published by UVA Press in 2022. She began releasing Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant in 2020…
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