European & Russian Folklore & Mythology, Fiction - General & Miscellaneous

Old Peter's Russian Tales

Name: Old Peter's Russian Tales
Author: Arthur Ransome
ISBN: 9781557424563

by Arthur Ransome

Available on Bookshop Write a review

Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.

Overview

This is a book written far away in Russia, for English children who play in deep lanes with wild roses above them in the high hedges, or by the small singing becks that dance down the gray fells at home. Russian fairyland is quite different. Under my windows the wavelets of the Volkhov (which has its part in one of the stories) are beating quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian plain and the distant forest. Somewhere in that forest of great trees--a forest so big that the forests of England are little woods beside it--is the hut where old Peter sits at night and tells these stories to his grandchildren.

Includes twenty traditional tales told by Old Peter to his two grandchildren.

Synopsis

The stories in this book are those that Russian peasants tell their children and each other. In Russia hardly anybody is too old for fairy stories and I have even heard soldiers on their way to the war talking of very wise and very beautiful princesses as they drank their tea by the side of the road.' (Excerpt from Author's Note)