Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Shop the sale
In celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, shop our limited-time sale on bestselling audiobooks from April 22nd-28th. Don’t miss out—purchases support your local bookstore!
Shop nowThe Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreIn the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schönwerth's work was lost—until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manuscripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive. Now, for the first time, Schönwerth's lost fairy tales are available in English. Violent, dark, and full of action, and upending the relationship between damsels in distress and their dragon-slaying heroes, these more than seventy stories bring us closer than ever to the unadorned oral tradition in which fairy tales are rooted, revolutionizing our understanding of a hallowed genre.
Erika Eichenseer is the director of the Franz Xaver von Schonwerth Society. She is also a poet and essayist, who has been published in Schonere Heimat, Nordgau-Festschrift, Charivari, and Literatur in Bayern. Erika lives in Germany.
Franz Xaver von Schonwerth (1810-1886) had a successful career in law and the Bavarian royal court before devoting himself full-time to cataloging the customs and folktales of his homeland. He was born in Amberg as the first of five children of Joseph Schonwerth, a royal drawing professor. He obtained a law degree from the University of Munich. In 1845, he became the private secretary to Crown Prince Maximilian of Bavaria. After the prince's accession as King Maximilian II, he headed his cabinet as well as continuing to serve as his private secretary and manage his wealth; he was responsible for guiding the king in his patronage of the arts and sciences. From 1854 on, he collected a wide variety of information about Bavaria, including legends, fairytales, and proverbs, as well as personal stories from peasants.
Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor and a senior fellow at Harvard University. The editor of the Norton Critical Edition of The Classic Fairy Tales and The Annotated Brothers Grimm, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Heather Wilds has appeared in numerous plays on the London stage to great critical acclaim. She has also performed in award-winning films, appeared on TV and in commercials, and works as an audiobook narrator and voice actress.