FOLK TALES OF BRITAIN: LEGENDS AND NARRATIVES

First editions thus, first printings. Complete in six volumes, comprising two slipcased sets of three volumes. 'Legends' is bound in red cloth and 'Narratives' in green, each volume has a wraparound illustration in black and gilt featuring a different creature and is lettered to the spine in gilt. Each volume has a colour frontispiece and is illustrated throughout in black and white by Hannah Firmin, Peter Firmin and Clare Melinsky. Fine copies, the bindings square and tight, the contents clean and bright throughout. Housed in the original slipcases.

First published in 1970 and 1971 in four volumes as 'A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in English', comprising 'Part A: Folk Narratives' and 'Part B: Folk Legends', this exceedingly ambitious collection took Briggs ten years to complete and remains to this day the definitive collection of British folk tales. In his introduction to 'Narratives', Philip Pullman states "This is one of the great books of Britain. Every nation needs its own collection of folk tales, and this is the fullest and the most authoritative we have". Briggs was a scholar of folklore, receiving a doctorate from Oxford University in 1952 for her thesis on folklore in seventeenth century literature before going on to write a number of acclaimed books on fairies and folklore. She was elected as the president of the Folklore Society in 1967, a post she held for three years. The society established the Katharine Briggs Award annual book prize in 1982 in honour of her outstanding contribution to the field of folklore studies. These beautiful Folio Society editions feature prefaces by the award-winning authors Kevin Crossley-Holland and Philip Pullman, both of whom have written books on mythology and folklore, and illustrations by Hannah Firmin, Peter Firmin and Clare Melinsk which wonderfully capture and honour the content and context of the stories.