Robert Nisbet Bain
“She waved her right hand and swans were swimming in the water.” Illustration by Noel L. Nisbet, published in Russian Fairy Tales from the Russian of Polevoi (1915), Frederick A. Stokes Company.
Born in London in 1854, Robert Nisbet Bain was a British historian and linguist for the British Museum. Historians tell us that Bain was able to read and work with over 20 languages. His proficiency in languages led to him translating several books including the Norwegian classic, Weird Tales from Northern Seas, translated from the Danish by Jonah Lie.
His work with fairy tales includes folklore from the Ukraine, with a collection known as Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. Bain also worked with Russian fairy tales and Turkish fairy tales. He also contributed to the Encyclopedia Britannica, writing biographies for a number of esteemed individuals, in particular, Bain is known for his exhaustive biography on another fairy tale author, Hans Christian Andersen. Bain passed away in 1909.
- The Flying Ship
- The Fox and the Cat (Robert Nisbet Bain)
- The Straw Ox
- The Fisherman and the Draug
- The Frog-Tsarevna
- The Story of the Tsarevich Ivan, and of the Harp that Harped Without a Harper
- The Story of Gore-Gorinskoe
- The Story of the Wind
- The Story of Little Tsar Novishny, the False Sister, and the Faithful Beasts
- The Story of Tremsin, the Bird Zhar, and Nastasia, the Lovely Maid of the Sea
- The Story of the Unlucky Days
- The Story of the Forty-First Brother
- The Serpent Wife
- The Sparrow and the bush
- The Story of Unlucky Daniel
- The Story of Ivan and the Daughter of the Sun
- The Serpent-Tsarevich and His Two Wives
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