"Cinderella", or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants that are told throughout the world. The protagonist is a young girl living in forsaken circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune, with her ascension to the throne via marriage. The story of Rhodopis, recounted by the Greek geographer Strabo sometime between 7 BC and 23 AD, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt, is usually considered to be the earliest known variant of the Cinderella story.
Harold Schechter is an American true crime writer who specializes in serial killers. He is a Professor Emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York where he taught classes in American literature and myth criticism for forty-two years. Schechter's essays have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and the International Herald Tribune. He is the editor of the Library of America volume, True Crime: An American Anthology. His newest book, published in September 2023, is Murderabilia: A History of Crime in 100 Objects.
"Freeforall" is a 1986 dystopian short story by Margaret Atwood, often described as a gender flipped version of her novel The Handmaid's Tale.
In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the king. Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, and Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius.
The Penelopiad is a novella by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was published in 2005 as part of the first set of books in the Canongate Myth Series where contemporary authors rewrite ancient myths. In The Penelopiad, Penelope reminisces on the events of the Odyssey, life in Hades, Odysseus, Helen of Troy, and her relationships with her parents. A Greek chorus of the twelve maids, who Odysseus believed were disloyal and whom Telemachus hanged, interrupt Penelope's narrative to express their view on events. The maids' interludes use a new genre each time, including a jump-rope rhyme, a lament, an idyll, a ballad, a lecture, a court trial and several types of songs.
Vasilisa the Beautiful or Vasilisa the Fair is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki.
Eight Little Piggies (1993) is the sixth volume of collected essays by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The essays were selected from his monthly column "The View of Life" in Natural History magazine, to which Gould contributed for 27 years. The book covers topics that are common to Gould's writing in a discursive manner, including evolution and its teaching, science biography, probabilities, and common sense.
Seventeen Years is a 1999 Chinese film directed by Zhang Yuan and starring Li Bingbing in her feature film debut. Seventeen Years was screened at several international film festivals where it garnered numerous accolades, including the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the 56th Venice International Film Festival.
The Bone Forest is a collection of fantasy short stories by British writer Robert Holdstock, published in 1991 (UK) and 1992 (US). It opens with a novella of the same name, followed by seven short stories. The novella is a prequel to the entire Mythago Wood cycle. According to the author it was written "to fill in the background and back-story to Mythago Wood" at the request of a screenwriter who was working on a planned movie version of Mythago Wood.
"Happy Endings" is a short story by Margaret Atwood. It was first published in a 1983 Canadian collection, Murder in the Dark, and highlighted during the nomination period for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize.
Once Upon a Time... is a French educational animation franchise, created by Albert Barillé for his animation studio Procidis. There are seven distinct series, each focusing on different aspects of knowledge. Once Upon a Time... has been shown in a hundred different countries, and 150 million video cassettes and DVDs have been sold around the world, as well as 250 million tie-in books.
Weston Woods Studios is a production company that makes audio and short films based on well-known books for children. It was founded in 1953 by Morton Schindel in Weston, Connecticut, and named after the wooded area near his home. Weston Woods Studios' first project was Andy and the Lion in 1954, and its first animated film was The Snowy Day in 1964. In 1968, Weston Woods began a long collaboration with animator Gene Deitch. Later, they opened international offices in Henley-on-Thames, England, UK (1972), as well as in Canada (1975), and in Australia (1977). In addition to making the films, Weston Woods also conducted interviews with the writers, illustrators, and makers of the films. The films have appeared on children's television programs such as Captain Kangaroo, Eureeka's Castle, and Sammy's Story Shop. In the mid-1980s, the films were released on VHS under the Children's Circle titles, and Wood Knapp Video distributed these releases from 1988 to 1995.
Procedures for Underground is a book of poetry written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It was published in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company in 1970, and in paperback by both Little, Brown and Company and Oxford University Press, Canada in 1971. The poems of Procedures for Underground explore the territory of the psyche, evoking mythological archetypes, subconscious experience, and personal obsessions. This space of epiphanies and metamorphosis is, for Atwood, the "underground."
Murder in the Dark is a collection of short fiction by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1983. Some of the pieces were previously published. The 27 pieces range over a variety of styles, including fictionalized autobiography, parables, travel stories, satires and prose poems. The pieces hold together through their major themes of loss, menace and terror, and men's abuse of power.
Bluebeard's Egg is a collection of short stories by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, first published in 1983. The book's first American edition was released in 1986 under the name Bluebeard's Egg and other stories.
Good Bones and Simple Murders is a book by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, originally published in 1994. Although classified with Atwood's short fiction, it is an eclectic collection, featuring parables, monologues, prose poems, condensed science fiction, reconfigured fairy tales, as well as Atwood's own illustrations. Much of the book is a reprint of two earlier Atwood works, Good Bones and Murder in the Dark.
Susanne "Sanne" Ledermann was a German Jewish girl who was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. She was best-known for her friendship with sisters Anne and Margot Frank.
“ My Life as a Bat by marly sendry ” is a 1,433-word short story first appearing in a collection of 27 short stories and prose poems by Canadian author Margaret Atwood titled Good Bones, published in 1992. The story is written in the first-person point of view, from the perspective of an unnamed, ungendered narrator who claims to have lived a previous life as a bat and to have been reincarnated as a human. It is organized into five titled subsections, each introducing a new topic, considered from the alternating points of view of the narrator as a human and as their former bat self, “a point of view at once soothingly familiar” because bats are a widely known animal “and freakishly alien” because they are so often viewed as darkly mysterious, even frightening. The story's primary subject is the atypical perspective that humans, not bats, are frightening, a “[wry] revising [of] cultural myths.
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype is a 1992 book by American psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés, published by Ballantine Books. It spent 145 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list over a three-year span, a record at the time. Estés won a Las Primeras Award from the Mexican American Women's Foundation for being the first Latina on the New York Times Best Seller list. The book also appeared on other best seller lists, including USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal.
You Are Happy is a 1974 collection of poems by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood.
