The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales

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Warner, Sylvia Townsend

Warner, Sylvia Townsend (1893–1978),
English novelist, short‐story writer, and biographer. Her first novel, Lolly Willowes (1926), was the story of a spinster who moves to the depths of the country and becomes a witch; it was a best‐seller. In 1940 she published The Cat's Cradle Book, which purports to be a collection of old stories told by cats to their kittens. According to the narrator of the frame story, all our fairy tales originated with cats. That is why their mood is not heated and sentimental, but ‘cool … objective—and catlike’.

The tone of the Cat's Cradle tales is one of calm, detached amusement. Two of the best are riffs on the future adventures of the characters in ‘Puss‐in‐Boots’ and ‘Bluebeard’ or their descendants. In ‘Bluebeard's Daughter’, for instance, blue‐haired Djamileh and her husband are consumed with curiosity about...

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