Fairy-Tale Retelling
Fairy-tale retellings take a story everyone knows and turn it: a new point of view, a darker ending, or a world built out from a few familiar lines.
Where fairy-tale retelling came from
Fairy tales have always been retold. Charles Perrault's collection of 1697 and the Brothers Grimm's of 1812 reworked oral stories for new audiences, and each edition changed them further. The modern retelling, a novel-length reimagining for adult or teen readers, is much younger.
Robin McKinley's Beauty (1978) gave Beauty and the Beast a bookish, practical heroine, and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber (1979) rewrote Bluebeard, Red Riding Hood and others as sharp, sensual feminist stories. Jane Yolen's Briar Rose (1992) set Sleeping Beauty against the Holocaust, and Gregory Maguire's Wicked (1995) told Oz from the Witch's side.
The form boomed from the late 1990s, especially in young adult fiction: Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted (1997), Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl (2003) and Marissa Meyer's Cinder (2012), which made Cinderella a cyborg mechanic. Naomi Novik's Spinning Silver (2018), a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, brought the form to a wide adult audience.
What separates it from neighbouring subgenres
A fairy-tale retelling is defined by its source: a recognisable tale, reshaped. The pleasure is in the gap between the version you know and the one on the page, which separates it from fantasy that only borrows a fairy-tale mood.
Myths are about gods and heroes; fairy tales are about ordinary people, often children, meeting magic. Retellings of each look alike on the shelf, but they draw on different traditions.
Many romantasy novels start from a fairy tale, especially Beauty and the Beast. A retelling is defined by its source story; romantasy by the weight it gives the romance.
Some retellings move a tale into a real period, like Briar Rose's Holocaust setting. That makes them historical fantasy as well, with the fairy tale as the frame.
Fractured fairy tales, from The Princess Bride to Shrek, play the form for laughs. Retellings can be funny, but most take the original's darkness seriously.
A fairy-tale retelling begins with a story you already know, and asks whose version you were told.
How it reads
Expect a familiar outline with a twist: a villain's point of view, a modern or science-fiction setting, a heroine who refuses her assigned role, or a darker ending closer to the oral originals. Many retellings blend two or more tales, and part of the fun is spotting them.
Tone varies widely, from gentle middle-grade adventures to adult literary fiction. Short story collections are an important part of the form, and many readers first meet it through anthologies.
Reader favorites
Popular in Fairy-Tale Retelling right now
01
Spinning Silver
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Cinder
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A Court of Thorns and Roses
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Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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Ella Enchanted
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Beauty
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Briar Rose
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Frequently asked
What's the difference between a fairy-tale retelling and fairy-tale-inspired fantasy?+–
A retelling follows a specific tale closely enough that you recognise it. Fairy-tale-inspired fantasy borrows the atmosphere of woods, curses and bargains without following any one story.
Where should a new reader start?+–
Spinning Silver is a rich, standalone adult novel. For a quick, inventive young adult option, Cinder starts a series that retells a different tale in each book.
Is Wicked a fairy-tale retelling?+–
It retells The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which is a children's novel rather than a traditional fairy tale. It's usually shelved with retellings because it does the same thing: tells a familiar story from the other side.
Why are so many retellings dark?+–
Partly because the oldest versions were. Early collections of the Grimms' tales include violence and cruelty that later versions softened, and many retellings restore it or examine it.
Is The Bloody Chamber a good starting point?+–
It's the classic of the form and only a short collection. Its prose is dense and its themes are adult, so it suits readers who like literary fiction.
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