Free Book of Stolen Tales by D. J. McIntosh Page A

know. Books used to be sold in sections, or quires, as we term them. And customers had to pay to have their books bound themselves. At our shop we bring in an outside expert who knows how to hand bind. Otherwise, everything is done by us.”
    We walked over to one of the rectangular tables. Norris explained their starting point was always with the spirit of the book. “All the other decisions flow from that,” he said. He carefully picked a finished book from a shelf and removed it from its plastic sleeve.
    â€œCharles’s pride and joy was our fairy-tale editions. He loved the stories as a child, became a collector of them in university, and went on to publish them.” He put the book on the table for me to leaf through. “This is the true tale of Cinderella, based on a story by Giambattista Basile, not the cartoon version children are familiar with today. Perrault must take the blame for that.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œHe modified it to make it more palatable to genteel readers. ‘Cinderella’ is an old story, although not originally European. We think it came from China as an oral folk tale. Giambattista Basile was the first to name the heroine Cinderella.”
    â€œWhat’s the other version?”
    â€œBasile painted her as a schemer who hated her stepmother and wanted her governess to marry her father instead. She and her governess conspired to murder the stepmother, plotting to push the woman into a chest and break her neck with the lid. Though the plan worked, her governess turned the tables. Soon after she married the father, she favored her own daughters and forced Cinderella to become a kitchen slave.”
    â€œAmazing the story could change so much. Th ose heroines always seem to be victimized by evil stepmothers or queens.”
    â€œThat’s true, and the men frequently come off as quite passive—taking a back seat to the main action, so to speak. They turn from a frog into a prince at the end,” he chortled, “and marry the girl who’s done all the work of carrying the narrative. Or a king will start the action by forbidding his daughter to marry her beloved and the rest of the tale is about how she cleverly outsmarts her father.”
    I laughed at this, not having thought about the stories from that point of view.
    â€œStepmothers were a later substitute for the wicked mother. The Grimm brothers made that change in ‘Snow White,’ for example. But the women at the center of these early stories were assertive and quite imaginative in devising ways to escape their fate. Basile’s tales were often quite black, full of sexual innuendo. The young women he portrayed were not at all like today’s passive princesses. They would ultimately succeed by astutely manipulating the people around them. Quite feisty ladies, I guess you would say.”
    For a moment Norris appeared to forget I was there as he murmured, “Charles loved what he called ‘the tales’ the most. One of his few happy memories was being read to by his nan before bed. He believed they were true, you know.”
    I smiled, thinking of Evelyn. “True? Not just stories?”
    â€œHe thought they were based on real events that occurred long ago. Of course, he didn’t think that as a child. He developed that theory later, as he began to travel and read widely.”
    Norris saw me admiring the font they’d used on the Cinderella book. “That’s an old Garamond font. One of the originals. Charles searched high and low for the type pieces. Beautiful, isn’t it? We commissioned Farrar for the illustrations. The complete printing was sold out before the first book came off the press.
    â€œOur next project would have been an adventure. Charles always wanted to try something original. Sylvia Bellman completed the graphics and we decided to make our own paper for it. Only a month ago we spent several long days gathering willow and cow