Croatian Tales of Long Ago
Cover of the 1924 London edition
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| Author | Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić |
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| Original title | Priče iz davnine |
| Translator | F.S. Copeland |
| Illustrator | Vladimir Kirin |
| Country | Croatia |
| Language | Croatian |
| Genre | Children's short story collection |
| Publisher | Matica hrvatska |
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Publication date
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1916 |
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Published in English
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1922 (New York) 1924 (London) |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 258 pp (New York edition) |
Croatian Tales of Long Ago (Croatian: Priče iz davnine), is a short story collection written by the acclaimed children's author Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić (sometimes spelled as "Ivana Berlić-Mažuranić" in English), originally published in 1916 in Zagreb by the Matica hrvatska publishing house. The collection is considered her masterpiece and it features a series of newly written fairy tales heavily inspired by motifs taken from ancient Slavic mythology of pre-Christian Croatia.
Croatian Tales of Long Ago are seen as one of the most typical examples of her writing style which has been compared by literary critics to Hans Christian Andersen and J. R. R. Tolkien due to the way it combines original fantasy plots with folk mythology.
The collection was translated into English by F.S. Copeland and first published in New York in 1922 by the Frederick A. Stokes Co. and in 1924 in London by the George Allen & Unwin publishing house, the same company which originally published J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit in 1937, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1954–55. The English-language editions also featured illustrations by the Croatian illustrator Vladimir Kirin.
The original Croatian edition published in 1916 consisted of six stories. Two additional stories were later added and first published in the Croatian 1926 edition. These eight appear in contemporary Croatian editions. Since the English translation was published before the extra two stories were written, they featured only the original six tales. The following is the list of original titles followed by English titles as translated by Copeland (stories missing from the English version are marked with the † symbol):
Between 2002 and 2006, the eight stories from the collection were adapted into a series of flash animated cartoons and interactive games made by an international team of animators from eight different countries, led by Helena Bulaja. The project won numerous awards at various new media and animation festivals. The cartoons were produced in Croatian, English and German and published in CD-ROM format, and are available for viewing online.
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