Ruth Manning-Sanders

Ruth Manning-Sanders (born 1888 in Swansea, Wales; died October 12, 1988, in Penzance, England) was a Welsh poet and author who was perhaps best known for her series of children's books in which she collected and retold fairy tales from all over the world. The dust jacket for "A Book of Giants" aptly describes her writing style: "Mrs. Manning-Sanders tells the stories with wit and good humor. There is not a word wasted."

Biography

Manning-Sanders was the youngest of three daughters of an English Unitarian minister. She was born in Wales but, when she was 3, her family moved to their native England in Cheshire. As a child, she had a great interest in reading books on many topics. She and her two sisters wrote and acted in their own plays. She described her childhood as, "extraordinarily happy ... with kind and understanding parents and any amount of freedom."

Some great insight into her childhood, and perhaps her inspirations, comes from an autobiographical story she tells in the foreword to "Scottish Folk Tales":

When were children, my sisters and I, we spent our summer holidays in a farmhouse at the edge of a sea loch in the Highlands. The farmer's family was a big one, ranging from Granny Stewart (very old, very lame, and generally laughing) down through parents, grown-up sons and daughters, to children of our own age. Granny Stewart knew no end of stories, and she loved to tell them as much as we loved to listen. ... Of course, we weren't always listening to stories: that was a wet weather pastime. At other times we were out swimming, or riding the farm horses (when they allowed themselves to be caught) or boating on the loch and singing to the seals. ...The evenings would usually find us gathered in the big candle-lit barn, with one of the grown-up sons (either Jock or Lachie) marching up and down playing the bagpipes, and all the rest of us energetically dancing reels. What fun we had! But I think the highlight of all these holidays came on my tenth birthday. On the evening before this birthday (unknown to us children) a gipsy with a dancing bear arrived at the farm, asking to be ferried across the loch. With a good supper of cheese and oatcakes, and a bed of straw in a disused stable, the gipsy was easily persuaded to stay the night. Imagine my joyous surprise when, on running out the next morning after breakfast, I saw the bear on a grass plat close to the quay, waiting to go through his tricks. ... And when the tricks had been duly performed, with ample rewards of 'sugar and spice and all things nice' between each one, the bear was led down to the waiting boat, clambered in, and seated himself in the stern, like the seasoned traveller he was. I remember it so vividly: the bear with his humped brown back and heavy head, the two rowers watching his every movement rather anxiously, and ourselves standing in a group on the quay, shouting our farewells. But not once did that bear turn to give us a parting glance. His eyes were fixed on the opposite shore, where doubtless he would go through his performance all over again: though never, surely, to a more appreciative audience... (The name of the farm, by the way, was "Shian", which means the place where fairies live.)

Manning-Sanders studied English literature and Shakespearean studies at Manchester University. She married English artist George Manning-Sanders and spent much of her early married life touring Great Britain with a horse-drawn caravan and working in the circus (a topic she wrote about extensively). Eventually, the family moved into a cottage in the fishing hamlet of Land's End, Cornwall. She and her husband had two children together, one of whom, Joan Floyd (May 17, 1913, to May 9, 2002), found some fame as a teenage artist in the 1920s while under her maiden name of Joan Manning-Sanders.

After World War II and the accidental death of her husband (in 1952), Manning-Sanders published dozens of fairy-tale anthologies, mostly during the 1960s and 1970s. Many of them had titles beginning with "A Book of..." Some titles, therefore, were "A Book of Wizards", "A Book of Dwarfs", and so forth.

In the foreword to her 1971 fairy-tale anthology, "A Choice of Magic", Manning-Sanders writes: "There can be no "new" fairy tales. They are records of the time when the world was very young; and never, in these latter days, can they, or anything like them, be told again. Should you try to invent a new fairy tale you will not succeed: the tale rings false, the magic is spurious. For the true world of magic is ringed round with high, high walls that cannot be broken down. There is but one little door in the high walls which surround that world -- the little door of 'once upon a time and never again.' And so it must suffice that we can enter through that little door into the fairy world and take our choice of all its magic."

In the forewords to some fairy-tale compilations, Manning-Sanders discusses the origins of the tales she is retelling. The stories in "A Book of Dragons" hail from Greece, China, Japan, Macedonia, Ireland, Romania and Germany, among other places. Manning-Sanders goes out of her way to state that "not all dragons want to gobble up princesses." She thus includes tales of kind and proud dragons, along with the savage ones.

Some insight into how Manning-Sanders believes fairy tales should usually end can be gleaned from a passage in her foreword to "A Book of Witches": "Now in all these stories, as in fairy tales about witches in general, you may be sure of one thing: however terrible the witches may seem -- and whatever power they may have to lay spells on people and to work mischief -- they are always defeated. ... Because it is the absolute and very comforting rule of the fairy tale that the good and brave shall be rewarded, and that bad people shall come to a bad end." Along those same lines, Manning-Sanders notes in the foreword to "A Book of Princes and Princesses": "And so you will find, as you read these stories, that they all have one thing in common. Though they come from many different countries, and were told long, long ago by simple people separated that they may not even have known of each other's existence, yet the stories these people told are all alike in this: they every one have a happy ending."

While many of the tales Manning-Sanders relates in her various fairy-tale anthologies are not commonly known, she also includes stories about some famous literary and cultural characters, such as Baba Yaga, Jack the Giant-Killer, Anansi, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Robin Hood and Aladdin.

In the February 1989 issue of "The Junior Bookshelf", M.S. Crouch wrote, "For many long-lived writers, death is followed by eclipse. I hope that publishers will (continue to re-release Manning-Sanders') priceless treasury of folk-tales. We would all be the poorer for their loss."

Notes

* Many of her children's fairy-tale titles were illustrated, quite memorably, by Robin Jacques, who was quoted as saying "My preference is for children's books of the more imaginative and fanciful kind, since these leave greater scope for illustrative invention, where I feel most at home. Thus, my work with Ruth Manning-Sanders has proved most satisfying, and the twenty-five books we have done together contain much of the work that I feel personally happiest with."
* Others who illustrated her fairy-tale titles included Victor Ambrus, Eileen Armitage, Raymond Briggs, Donald Chaffin, Brian Froud, Lynette Hemmant, C. Walter Hodges, J. Hodgson, Annette Macarthur-Onslow, Constance Marshall, Kilmeny Niland, William Papas, Trevor Ridley, Jacqueline Rizvi, Leon Shtainmets, William Stobbs, and Astrid Walford.
* For children's literature, Manning-Sanders' American and international publishers included E. P. Dutton, Heinemann, McBride, Laurie, Oxford University Press, Roy, Methuen & Co. Ltd., Hamish Hamilton, Watts and Co. (London), Thomas Nelson, Angus & Robertson and Lippincott.
* She worked for two years with Rosaire's Circus in England. Some of her fiction and non-fiction is inspired by her time with the circus. The novel "The Golden Ball: A Novel of the Circus" (1954) is said to have some parallels to the life of Leon LaRoche, a famed circus performer who was with Barnum & Bailey Circus from 1895 through 1902.
* She was a poet and novelist, most notably in the years prior to World War II. At least two of her early collections of poetry -- "Karn" and "Martha Wish-You-Ill" were published by Hogarth Press, the hand-printed publishing house run by Leonard and Virginia Woolf.
* She won the Blindman International Poetry Prize in 1926 for "The City".
* She was, for a time, a poetry protegee of the English author Walter de la Mare. De la Mare took at least one holiday to the Manning-Sanders' residence in Cornwall.
* When living in Sennen, Cornwall, Manning-Sanders was, for a time, a neighbor of British writer Mary Butts.
* Her short story, "John Pettigrew's Mirror," was published in "One and All - A Selection of Stories from Cornwall," a 1951 anthology (edited by Denys Val Baker). The story was republished at least once, in the 1988 anthology "Ghost Stories" (edited by Robert Westall).

elected bibliography

Complete list of "A Book of..." titles:* "A Book of Giants", 1962:* "A Book of Dwarfs", 1963:* "A Book of Dragons", 1964:* "A Book of Witches", 1965:* "A Book of Wizards", 1966:* "A Book of Mermaids", 1967:* "A Book of Ghosts and Goblins", 1968:* "A Book of Princes and Princesses", 1969:* "A Book of Magical Beasts", 1970 (editor):* "A Book of Devils and Demons", 1970:* "A Book of Charms and Changelings", 1971:* "A Book of Ogres and Trolls", 1972:* "A Book of Sorcerers and Spells", 1973:* "A Book of Magic Animals", 1974 :* "A Book of Monsters", 1975:* "A Book of Enchantments and Curses", 1977:* "A Book of Kings and Queens", 1977:* "A Book of Marvels and Magic", 1978:* "A Book of Spooks and Spectres", 1979:* "A Book of Cats and Creatures", 1981:* "A Book of Heroes and Heroines", 1982 :* "A Book of Magic Adventures", 1983:* "A Book of Magic Horses", 1984

Other selected titles:* "The Pedlar and Other Poems", 1919:* "Karn", 1922:* "Pages from the History of Zachy Trenoy -- Sometime Labourer in the Hundred of Penwith", 1922:* "The Twelve Saints", 1926:* "Martha Wish-You-Ill", 1922:* "The City", 1927:* "Waste Corner", 1927:* "Selina Pennaluna", 1927:* "Hucca's Moor", 1929:* "The Crochet Woman", 1930:* "The Growing Trees", 1931:* "She Was Sofia", 1932:* "Mermaid's Mirror", 1935:* "The Girls Who Made an Angel", 1936:* "Children By The Sea", 1938 (published in United States as "Adventure May Be Anywhere"):* "Elephant: The Romance of Laura", 1938:* "Luke's Circus", 1939:* "Mystery at Penmarth", 1941:* "The West of England," 1949 (non-fiction):* "Swan of Denmark: The Story of Hans Christian Andersen", 1949 (non-fiction):* "Seaside England", 1951 (non-fiction):* "The River Dart", 1951 (non-fiction):* "The English Circus", 1952 (non-fiction):* "The Golden Ball: A Novel of the Circus", 1954:* "", 1958:* "A Bundle of Ballads", 1959:* "Circus Boy", 1960:* "Red Indian Folk and Fairy Tales", 1960:* "Animal Stories", 1961 (non-fiction):* "Birds, Beasts, and Fishes", 1962:* "The Smugglers", 1962:* "", 1964:* "", 1965:* "The Crow's Nest", 1965:* "Slippery Shiney", 1965:* "The Extraordinary Margaret Catchpole," 1966:* "The Magic Squid", 1968:* "Stories from the English and Scottish Ballads", 1968:* "", 1968:* "", 1969:* "The Spaniards Are Coming!", 1969:* "Gianni and the Ogre", 1970:* "A Choice of Magic", 1971:* "The Three Witch Maidens", 1972:* "Festivals", 1973:* "Stumpy: A Russian Tale," 1974:* "Grandad and the Magic Barrel", 1974:* "Old Dog Sirko: A Ukrainian Tale", 1974:* "Sir Green Hat and the Wizard", 1974:* "Tortoise Tales", 1974:* "Ram and Goat", 1974:* "Young Gabby Goose", 1975:* "Scottish Folk Tales", 1976:* "Fox Tales", 1976:* "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse: Aesop's Fable Retold", 1977:* "Robin Hood and Little John", 1977:* "Old Witch Boneyleg", 1978:* "The Cock and the Fox", 1978:* "Boastful Rabbit", 1978:* "Folk and Fairy Tales", 1978:* "The Haunted Castle", 1979:* "Robin Hood and the Gold Arrow", 1979:* "Oh Really, Rabbit!", 1980:* "Hedgehog and Puppy Dog", 1982:* "Tales of Magic & Mystery", 1985

Cross references

* List of Manning-Sanders tales by region

References

* Thomson Gale, "Contemporary Authors" (2004)
* M.S. Crouch, "The Junior Bookshelf", February 1989
* Biographic material culled from introductions and dust jackets of several of Manning-Sanders' books
* John Clute and John Grant, "The Encyclopedia of Fantasy" (1999 updated paperback edition)
* Theresa Whistler, "The Life of Walter de la Mare" (2004)
* Nathalie Blondel (Editor), "The Journals of Mary Butts" (2002)
* Donna Elizabeth Rhein, "The handprinted books of Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1917-1932" (master's thesis)
* [http://www.glassgrapes.com/jacques.html A Web site about illustrator Robin Jacques]