Maria Magdalene Tatar (born May 13, 1945) is an American academic whose expertise lies in

children's literature Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader. Children's ...

, German literature, and folklore. She is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Chair of the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

Biography

Maria Tatar was born in Pressath, Germany. Her family emigrated from

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croa ...

to the United States in the 1950s when she was a child.Amy Sutherland (October 27, 2012)
"Maria Tatar: Professor and fairy-tale expert"
''The Boston Globe''. She grew up in

Highland Park, Illinois Highland Park is a suburban city located in the southeastern part of Lake County, Illinois, United States, about north of downtown Chicago. Per the 2020 census, the population was 30,176. Highland Park is one of several municipalities located ...

and graduated from Highland Park High School in 1963. Tatar earned an undergraduate degree from

Denison University Denison University is a private liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. One of the earliest colleges established in the former Northwest Territory, Denison University was founded in 1831. The college was first called the Granville Literary a ...

and a doctoral degree from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. In 1971, after finishing her doctorate at Princeton University, Tatar joined the faculty of

. She received tenure in 1978. She lives in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

Selected works

* ''Spellbound: Studies on Mesmerism and Literature'' (

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial s ...

, 1978) * ''The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales'' (Princeton, 1987) * ''Off With Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood'' (Princeton, 1993) * ''The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales'' ( W. W. Norton & Company, 2002) * ''The Annotated Brothers Grimm'' (W.W. Norton, 2004) * ''The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen'' (W.W. Norton, 2008) * ''Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood'' (W.W. Norton, April 2009) * "From Bookworms to Enchanted Hunters: Why Children Read" (''Journal of Aesthetic Education'', Summer 2009, vol.43, no.2, p. 19-36) ISSN 0021-8510 * ''The Annotated Peter Pan'', ed., (W.W. Norton, 2011) * ''The Annotated African American Folktales'', ed. with

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Ame ...

, (Liveright-W.W. Norton, 2017), * ''The Fairest of Them All: Snow White and 21 Tales of Mothers and Daughters'', (

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...

, 2020) * ''The Heroine with 1001 Faces'' (Liveright, 2021),

References

External links

Maria Tatar
at Harvard University
Breezes from Wonderland
– Tatar's blog on storytelling, folklore, and children's literature * , 2008)
"Tatar Discusses Development of Fairy Tales"
''The Harvard Crimson'' (April 8, 2012) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Tatar, Maria Living people Denison University alumni Princeton University alumni Harvard University faculty 1945 births People from Highland Park, Illinois