Everyone loves a good story with a princess, a silver tower, birds turned to dragons, a frog and — of course — a fairy or two with special talents and surprising abilities.

Jane Harrington has written a new book, “Women of the Fairy Resistance” that tells the stories of the women in the French salons of the 1890s who originated the fairy tales we know today. One of these women coined the term fairy tale. Over the years these female writers have been intentionally ignored and forgotten by a world controlled by men who respun the women’s tales and took credit for them.

The French female storytellers (les conteuses) wrote their seemingly harmless stories, cleverly disguising their tales of rebellion against the misogynistic and homophobic world controlled by Louis XIV. Their stories were popular with the people for a century but gradually became erased by the later fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm.

Harrington’s carefully researched book details seven of the salon sisters accompanied by a dozen of the retold original tales based on the original French translations. Harrington explains there were about 70 tales but she wanted to select the ones that reflected the authors resisting societal norms under Louis XIV “so I zeroed in these.” 

These fairy tales boldly featured female protagonists instead of the familiar compliant Cinderella or naive Snow White. The introduction explains “the plot lines push against a prevalent viewpoint that women are weak and of limited intelligence, a viewpoint that favors men as public beings while women are expected to remain hidden.” Les conteuses view their tales as liberation from a culture that ignores and disparages them.

Harrington says a lot of the original stories had not been translated into English and others had been translated in the 19th century but never made it across the ocean. She said since she doesn’t read French that she had to rely on translation software and if she wanted to start with the original, the translation software couldn’t handle the odd old print. So sometimes she had to go sentence by sentence. 

“I started pecking away on this book 8-9 years ago when I started teaching fairy tales in college. I would do a little research and build on what I knew. Two years ago I thought I had amassed enough research and put a proposal together.” She says her proposal was accepted but they wanted some more research. She found some of the information from the English scholars wasn’t true after all, “and I had to go back and rewrite some of my previous work. Every storyteller has their own spin, and translations can be wildly subjective and creative. It was a really intensive year.”

In addition, she had been relying on information that came out of Germany that focused mostly on the Brothers Grimm who purposely insulted les conteuses, comparing them to animals and warning of their depravity. This criticism was repeated, and their popularity was suppressed. 

Harrington grew up in Fairfax and moved to Alexandria in the 1990s where she was married and raised their children. She was well known for her children’s books and her active participation teaching in public and private schools and the park system.

She now lives in Appalachia where she currently crafts literary fiction and creative nonfiction, and her work has been widely acclaimed. Her recently published novel earned a starred review from a library journal who wrote,  “It belongs on every shelf of literature relating to this art form.”

She also teaches a course in fairy tales at Washington and Lee University. She says her class work requirements originally included literary criticism but, “I learned that AI can generate an essay in less than a minute that would probably get an A.” So she has moved to more creative writing over time. “I usually do try to have them write a fairy tale using their own experience. Let’s write something with a heart that a robot can’t write.”

Harrington will be appearing at Old Town Books in Alexandria on Nov. 16 from 7-8 pm for a book talk and signing.