"In this collection, Jack Zipes, the most important fairy-tale scholar of his generation, revives the considerable work of nineteenth-century French jurist and politician Édouard Laboulaye, whose fairy tales have not been previously anthologized, much less republished or critically studied. This latest discovery is a welcome one, and Zipes's translations of the tales are extremely well done." --Domna C. Stanton, coeditor of Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers
"Édouard Laboulaye's witty stories have been overlooked by anthologizers and translators alike since the late nineteenth century. Smack-Bam, or The Art of Governing Men presents new translations of his fairy tales in a modern edition. Bringing to the English-speaking world a writer famous in his day who slipped through the cracks of history, this collection fills a gap and is well worth our attention." --Christine A. Jones, editor of Mother Goose Reconfigured: A Critical Translation of Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales
Jack Zipes is the editor of The Sorcerer's Apprentice and The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (both Princeton), as well as The Great Fairy Tale Tradition (Norton). He is professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota.