Joseph Jacobs' 100th death anniversary (Australian compiler of "English Fairy Tales")

[leno...@yahoo.com]

I had no idea, until today, where he was from!

He died in Yonkers, New York.

I swear, some of the stories are even more scary than those from Grimm. Especially "The Hobyahs."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Jacobs
(this is pretty long)

Excerpt:

"Jacobs was born in Australia. He was the sixth surviving son of John Jacobs, a publican who had emigrated from London c.1837, and his wife Sarah, née Myers. Jacobs was educated at Sydney Grammar School and at the University of Sydney, where he won a scholarship for classics, mathematics and chemistry. He did not complete his studies in Sydney, but left for England at the age of 18 and entered St John's College, Cambridge. He graduated with a B.A. in 1876, and in 1877, studied at the University of Berlin.

"Jacobs married Georgina Horne and fathered two sons and a daughter. In 1900, he accepted an invitation to become revising editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia, which was then being prepared at New York, and settled permanently in the United States.

"He died on 30 January 1916."

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs.html
(links to individual stories)

http://www.mainlesson.com/displayauthor.php?author=jacobs
(more such links - check out the link to other authors at the top, too)

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Jacobs%2C%20Joseph%2C%201854-1916
(and more links)

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1280&bih=881&noj=1&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=%22joseph+jacobs%22+books&oq=%22joseph+jacobs%22+books&gs_l=img.3...2763.3613.0.3923.6.6.0.0.0.0.112.498.4j2.6.0....0...1c.1.64.img..0.2.147.GsZ2LHJ2Ugg
(photos and book covers)

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1280&bih=881&noj=1&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=%22joseph+jacobs%22+%22english+fairy+tales%22&oq=%22joseph+jacobs%22+%22english+fairy+tales%22&gs_l=img.3..0i24l2.37778.41729.1.41939.21.21.0.0.0.0.230.1552.18j1j1.20.0....0...1c.1.64.img..1.21.1623.Q1MUnWzFPrE
(more covers)

http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-Joseph-Jacobs.html
(VERY long piece on his work)

Excerpts:

Jacobs was a fine, and witty, author. Two excerpts may be given to serve as examples:

"Let us try to realise in imagination what must have happened when, for the first time, the saying was uttered that was afterwards to become a proverb, or a tale that was destined to be a folk or fairy-tale, was first told. Was it the Folk that said the one or told the other? Did the collective Folk assembled in folk-moot simultaneously shout, 'When the wine's in, the wit's out,' or 'Penny wise, pound foolish'? No, it was some bucolic wit, already the chartered libertine of his social circle, who first raised hearty guffaws by those homely pieces of wisdom. The proverbial description of a proverb. 'The wisdom of many, the wit of one,' recognises the truth." [Jacobs, 1893: 234 quoted in Fine, 1987: 187]

"My folk-lore friends look on with sadness while they view me laying profane hands on the sacred text of my originals. I have actually at times introduced or deleted whole incidents, have given another turn to a tale, or finished off one that was incomplete, while I have had no scruple in prosing a ballad or softening down over-abundant dialect. This is rank sacrilege in the eyes of the rigid orthodox in matters folk-lorical. My defence might be that I had a cause at heart as sacred as our science of folk-lore-the filling of our children's imaginations with bright trains of images. But even on the lofty heights of folk-lore science I am not entirely defenceless ... Why may I not have the same privilege as any other story-teller, especially when I know the ways of story-telling as she is told in English, at least as well as a Devonshire or Lancashire peasant? And - conclusive argument - wilt thou, oh orthodox brother folk-lorist, still continue to use Grimm and Asbj6rnsen? Well, they did the same as I." [Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales (London: D. Nutt, 1894), pp. vi-vi quoted in Fine, 1987: 190]


http://www.storyteller.net/articles/136
(biographical article)

Excerpt:

...In all his writings for children, Jacobs preserved the 'oral voice' - the way the stories should actually be told to children. In maintaining this approach, Jacobs gave the world versions of its best known and most representative folk stories in a form suited to children while remaining true to the essential core of the original versions. In many respects his work provides a worthy successor to that of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen - in preserving traditional tales in a manner that secured their place for enjoyment by many generations of children.

According to Eloise Ramsey (1952), Jacobs rescued the fast-disappearing English tales from a threatened oblivion and rekindled interest in them by rewriting them in a style he himself once described "as good as an old nurse will speak". Professor Stewig (1987, 128) credits Jacobs at the age of thirty-six years with being "the person most responsible for preserving the body of British folk tales". The collection's greatest significance is that it recorded old tales at a critical time when they were in danger of being lost.

Despite Jacobs' deep involvement in the study of folklore and the activities of the Society throughout the 1880's and 1890's and his voluminous output of writings - articles, reviews, lectures, literature studies and his numerous compilations of fairy/folk tales for children - his interest in Jewish History never waned. In 1900, he went to the United States to become the revising editor of The Jewish Encyclopedia. He was also appointed a Professor of English at the Theological Seminary in New York and for a time edited the British journal "Folklore"...

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jacobs-joseph-6817
(another)

Last sentence:

...Australian Jewry can claim this great and gentle scholar, whose versatile ability knew no bounds, as an outstanding son; yet because his contribution to his people was intellectual and his life spent far from his homeland, he is nearly forgotten in Australia.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/184741.Joseph_Jacobs
(reader reviews and photo)

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22joseph+jacobs%22+books
(audio of some of the stories - read by Stephen King?)



Lenona.

[leno...@yahoo.com]

This one's eerie too ("The Strange Visitor"):

https://books.google.com/books?id=a-IOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=%22strange+visitor%22+%22joseph+jacobs%22&source=bl&ots=n_OxOAADs0&sig=KoZ55_NSpUBQMJknrD_XykF8f34&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVmbvR3N7KAhXKHT4KHes3AMMQ6AEIPDAG#v=onepage&q=%22strange%20visitor%22%20%22joseph%20jacobs%22&f=false

Regarding this link (it does not include the John D. Batten illustrations):

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs.html#ENGLISH

What's good is that each story has Jacobs' notes at the end. You may be familiar with one goody-goody version of "Jack and the Beanstalk." Here's what Jacobs said about it, in 1894 (HIS version is the unsanitized version):

"There is a chap-book version which is very poor; it is given by Mr E. S. Hartland, English Folk and Fairy Tales (Camelot Series,) p. 35 seq. In this, when Jack arrives at the top of the Beanstalk he is met by a fairy, who gravely informs him that the ogre had stolen all his possessions from Jack's father. The object of this was to prevent the tale becoming an encouragement to theft ! I have had greater confidence in my young friends, and have deleted the fairy who did not exist in the tale as told to me. For the Beanstalk elsewhere, see Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, 293-8. Cosquin has some remarks on magical ascents (i, 14)."

I like "The Magpie's Nest" too (about why different birds make different nests, as they "learned" from the magpie):

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/jacobs/english/magpiesnest.html

Amusing notes on that one:

"I have built up 'The Magpie's Nest' from two nidification myths, as a German professor would call them, in the Rev. Mr Swainson's Folk-Lore of British Birds, pp. 80 and 166. I have received instruction about the relative values of nests from a little friend of mine named Katie, who knows all about it. If there is any mistake in the order of neatness in the various birds' nests, I must have learnt my lesson badly.

"English popular tradition is curiously at variance about the magpie's nidificatory powers, for another legend given by Mr Swainson represents her as refusing to be instructed by the birds, and that is why she does not make a good nest. The latter part of our tale occurs in the Welsh 'Fables of Catwg' in the Iola MS."

And, about "The Three Little Pigs":

"The only known parallels are one from Venice, Bernoni, Trad. Pop., punt. iii, p. 65, given in Crane, Italian Popular Tales, p. 267, 'The Three Goslings'; and a Negro tale in Lippincott's Magazine, December 1877, p. 753 ('Tiny Pig'). Another English version is given in Mr Lang's Green Fairy Book.

"As little pigs do not have hair on their chinny chin-chins, I suspect that they were originally kids, who have. This would bring the tale close to the Grimms' Wolf and Seven Little Kids (No. 5). In Steele and Temple's 'Lambikin' (Wide Awake Stories, p. 71), the Lambikin gets inside a Drumikin, and so nearly escapes the jackal. See Indian Fairy Tales, No. iii and Notes."


Lenona.