The Russian Garland

Illustration from The Russian Garland. Illustration by R. de Rosciszewiski, 1916.

The Russian Garland is a collection of Russian folk tales gathered and anthologized by British scholar Robert Steele. The stories were taken from miscellaneous chapbooks from around 1830, according to the book’s introduction by the editor. The Russian Garland was printed in the face of censorship, for the people Steele called “a class of severe and incorruptible critics,” children. As he writes, some of the stories are strictly Russian, while others are the work of a Russian interpretation of a German theme. Steele was a scholar and medievalist known for editing Roger Bacon’s Opera hactenus inedita, and also wrote Early English Music Printing and The Art of the Russian Icon. He died in 1944.