Some time back, a friend suggested that I submit my annotated edition of The Complete Norwegian Folktales and Legends of Asbjørnsen & Moe for consideration for the Katharine Briggs Award, the “annual book prize established by the Folklore Society to encourage the study of folklore, to help improve the standard of folklore publications in Britain and Ireland, to establish The Folklore Society as an arbiter of excellence, and to commemorate the life and work of the distinguished scholar Katharine Mary Briggs (1898-1980; Society president 1969-1972).”1 I like big shiny things – an engraved goblet, no less – as much as the next manchild, so I looked into the submission process, but ultimately decided not to go through with it.
My sudden loss of interest is easily explained: the process requires that four copies of the book be submitted to the judges (a necessity I quite understand). My volumes are big and thick, and therefore expensive. What is more, because of where I live, I cannot get them at cost price; I have to pay full whack. To buy four copies of the whole three-volume edition, I would have to shell out more than £200, plus shipping, an expense I am unwilling to cover for no guaranteed return.
(Of course, I might win… yadda yadda yadda… exposure… blah blah blah…)
-
Fun fact: Katharine Briggs once reviewed Pat Shaw Iversen’s and Carl Norman’s 1960 translation of a selection of folktales from the Asbjørnsen & Moe collection. In the course of her brief review, she spelt Asbjørnsen’s name incorrectly in a number of different ways. (See Folklore, Vol. 75, No. 4 (Winter, 1964), p. 289.) Mind you, most reviews of English editions of Asbjørnsen & Moe make a mistake here or there, no matter how brief they may be. ↩