Croatian Tales of Long Ago (1922)

Feb 7, 2013



A seminal collection of short stories by the acclaimed children's author Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić originally published in 1916 in Zagreb by the Matica Hrvatska publishing house. The collection is considered her masterpiece and it features a series of newly written fairy tales heavily inspired by motifs taken from ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia. Due to this way of combining original fantasy plots with folk mythology, Brlić-Mažuranić's writing style has been compared by literary critics to Hans Christian Andersen and J. R. R. Tolkien.  Indeed, the 1922 English translation by F.S. Copeland was published in London by George Allen & Unwin, the same company which would go onto publish Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy. The illustrations in this 1922 edition are by Croatian artist Vladimir Kirin. (Wikipedia)