Best Nonfiction Books About Fairy Tales and Folklore

Have you ever felt a connection to something very deep, very old, and just beyond the grasp of the world you know? It's like you can sense, feel, and taste an opportunity for adventure (or is it danger?) a mile away. There's no doubt there's folklore in your blood.

The best way to ignite that inner knowing, to feed the craving for ancient wisdom is by getting steeped in the cannon of fairy tales and folklore. Perhaps you start with The Classic Fairy Tales edited by Maria Tatar. (Maybe you already devoured this in junior high or college.) There's nothing like meeting the grittier, uncensored versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty, and understanding where they came from. There are many, many more tales to discover, many ways to engage with them, and many nonfiction books that explore. This list is a starting point for beginning scholars and fans of folklore to return to the thrill of the wild, overgrown forests of imagination, but with a dose of memoiristic maturity. These reads explore folklore, fairy tales, and the tales behind them: what they mean, how they were collected, and how they influence our lives.

Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

This iconic 1992 book by Clarissa Pinkola Estés dives into rich, multicultural folk stories, fairy tales, and myths that reconnect modern women with instinctive and innate natural traditions that have roamed and roared within the female soul for generations. For readers, the book serves as an introduction to the wild woman of magic and medicine who has been suppressed by culture. In addition to being a study in the intuitive and pure female psyche, the book is also an invitation back to it.

Happily: A Personal History-with Fairy Tales by Sabrina Orah Mark

Happily is a collection of essays from a column of the same name on The Paris Review. Sabrina Orah Mark uses a memoir-essay format to link the “classic,” predominantly European fairy tales we all grew up with to the beliefs that shape modern life and sense of meaning. Putting these fairy tales through the kaleidoscope lens of a Jewish woman raising Black children in the modern-day American South, the book has a way of making stories we've memorized by heart both stranger and more familiar.

The Fairy Tellers by Nicholas Jubber

This 2022 read is award-winning travel writer Nick Jubber's epic dive into the secret and untold history of fairy tales. Taking readers to the landscapes and cultures that birthed the fantastical and cautionary tales that shaped our fear and morals, Jubber introduces us to the creators who never got credit. These are the tellers of tales who had their stars stolen by familiar names like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. It takes a travel writer to transport the curious reader to Germany's Black Forest, the Mediterranean, Siberia, and hilly Lapland for some of the most interesting literary investigations ever done.

Wolfish by Erica Berry

A special read for lovers of wolf lore, Berry's Wolfish is a journalistic style of memoir, a gripping blend of science, history, and culture that investigates the truth beyond the human fascination with wolves in mythology and fairy tales, including Little Red Riding Hood. Berry lays out a compelling case for how wolves have been made to carry the symbolism of mankind's most entrenched beliefs and fears. You'll practically feel the heat of a wild pack in a frozen forest as you explore concepts of predator and prey, wild and domestic, and self versus other that the mere imagery of a wolf evokes in the human psyche.