Jane Harrington is the Next Speaker in the Anne and Edgar Basse Jr. Author Talk Series Harrington will talk about her new book, “Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance,” on Nov. 13.
Jane Harrington, visiting assistant professor of English, will discuss her new book, “Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun,” at Washington and Lee University at 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 13 in the Houston H. Harte Center Gallery in Leyburn Library. The talk is free and open to the public, and copies of the book will be available for purchase.
The lecture is sponsored by the Department of English, the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program and the University Library and is part of the University Library’s Anne and Edgar Basse Jr. Author Talk series, which invites W&L faculty to showcase their scholarship to the campus community. The Basse series is made possible by the Anne W. and Edgar A. Basse Jr. (’39) Endowment, which was created in 1988 to support the varied activities of the University Library Special Collections & Archives.
“Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance” resurrects the 17th-century salon writers who launched the first fairy tale craze with feminist, gender-bending tales that challenged kings and convention. In conversation with W&L English majors Nora Jacobson ’26 and Kaitlin Silva ’28, Harrington will share the origins of the project and the twists of her research journey, and will read from the biographies and retellings that make up the work.
Harrington says that when she first started teaching fairy tale course content at W&L, she dug into sources she hadn’t before and discovered a group of popular and prolific women writers in 17th-century Paris who started the public popularity for fairy tales, even coining the term, contes de fees.
“In my research, I soon learned these women wrote scads of tales, all of which did prominently feature fairies and female protagonists who were not at all like the weak or submissive princesses of the canon,” Harrington said. “And the more I learned about the writers themselves — that they were considered ‘unruly women’ by King Louis XIV — the more I wanted to revive their stories for modern readers. So began the quest that would result in this book.”
In a STARRED review, the Library Journal praised Harrington’s book for “[filling] an enormous gap in the history of fairy tales,” and said “it belongs on every shelf of literature related to this art form.” “Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance” was also described by the American Library Association’s Booklist as “meticulously researched and gorgeously presented [and] perfect for readers drawn to feminist literary history, narrative reclamation or the enduring influence of myth.”
This is Harrington’s ninth year teaching at W&L. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from George Mason University and her MFA from Carlow University. Her research and writing passions include the French salon writers who shaped the fairy tale tradition, Irish folklore and history, and the ecology and culture of the Appalachian region she calls home. Her debut novel, “In Circling Flight” (2022), was the winner of the Brighthorse Book Prize and longlisted for the Crook’s Corner Book Prize.
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