The Lost Princess

Duggan does not aim merely to supplement the narrative of males writers with a few women at the margins. Rather, she seeks to shift the mainstream . . . [she] shows that we should regard the conteuses not as incidental curiosities, exhumed then quickly forgotten, but as princesses of literary history who were never really lost at all. * TLS *
Anne Duggan has left no stone unturned in locating the source of many of our most famous fairy tales . . . Excavating history to create The Lost Princess has led her to some remarkable origins . . . Women from the beginning have been the story tellers and these early women remain unacknowledged until now. * Blue Wolf Reviews *
Excavating history can lead to stunning discoveries, and Anne Duggan brilliantly demonstrates how several talented and determined French women wrote tales that belong to our classical legacy without our realizing it. History, as Duggan indicates, speaks truth to power through these tales, but we must first learn how to untangle history to grasp what truth may mean. Duggan shows that these rebellious French women had, long before other European and North American writers, created dazzling stories that challenged male patriarchy * Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota *
Drawing on decades of research, Anne Duggan is a wise, brave, witty guide to fairy-tale history. The Lost Princess demonstrates that smart, resourceful heroines abound in the tales of past centuries. The brilliant women who wrote those tales challenged patriarchal norms in ways that continue to resonate today. * Jennifer Schacker, School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph, and author of National Dreams: The Remaking of Fairy Tales in Nineteenth-Century England *
Scholars such as Ruth Bottigheimer, Maria Tatar, Jack Zipes, Cristina Bacchilega, and Marina Warner have led the way in recovering the history of women and fairy tales. Now Duggan provides an innovative and deeply researched study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French women and their contributions to the genre . . . Drawing on the uses of intertextuality, Duggan traces the evolution of tales, focusing on Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, cat tales, and maiden warrior tales. She demonstrates that some of these stories started as literary tales and became oral (the reverse of the longtime assumption that oral tales came first). She discusses the dissemination of the French originals into German, Czech, and Mexican comics, film, theater, music, and board games. She also astutely analyzes how gender, sexual norms, female agency, cross-dressing, and arranged marriages appear in these tales. Duggan has rescued these writers, who have been ‘buried under the Perrault-Grimms-Anderson triumvirate and Walt Disney.’ Reaktion Books used fine paper and reproduced the almost four-dozen illustrations in exquisite detail and sometimes in color. A book to be treasured! Essential. * Choice *
A captivating and insightful exploration of the oft-overlooked contributions of French female authors, shedding light on how their narratives and perspectives have significantly impacted the evolution of literary fairy tales in Europe and America. . . . fairy tales written by women appealed to adults with risqué, gender-challenging, and gender-fluid themes, including the royal class in the United Kingdom and its elite culture. * Journal of Folklore Research Reviews *