Marina Warner

Warner, Marina (1946– ), English writer and critic. She has investigated how myths rule our perceptions in several important studies such as Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (1976), Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (1985), Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time (1994) and No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock (1998). Warner incorporates a feminist perspective in all her endeavours, and her most notable work in the field of the fairy tale is From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers (1995), a social history which seeks to recuperate the role that women have played in both the oral tradition of the folk tale and the literary one of the fairy tale. Warner has also edited Wonder Tales: Six Stories of Enchantment (1994), a collection of 17th‐century French fairy tales. Her novel Indigo (1992) and her unique stories in The Mermaids in the Basement (1993) contain fairy‐tale elements that revise conventional motifs and reflect her concern in restoring creative power to women as strong protagonists and authors of their own lives.

— Jack Zipes