Talk:Lays and Legends of Various Nations
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Sources[edit]
- Germany I to be published in March
- Part 2: France to be published on 1 April
- Ireland to be published on 1 May (advert at the end of the France volume?)
- Ireland as Number 3, and Number 4: Spain, to be published on 1 June
- Tartary as the sixth monthly part
- All seven parts listed, "published in Monthly Numbers"; advert for them being sold in two volumes, or separately as individual numbers
- Thoms stating that only seven were produced, due to the bankruptcy of the publisher
- Richard Mercer Dorson's History of British Folklore volume 1 (1968): "He called the book Lays and Legends of Germany, and presented it as the first of a series for various nations ... Thoms conceived a plan for a series to be titled Lays and Legends of Various Nations. The only volumes issued, all in 1834 and his rarest works, were for Germany, France, Spain, and Tartary. They were slight compilations of less than a hundred pages, save for Germany, which ran to three times the size of the others. ... Nor did the volumes announced in his notes for Greece, Denmark, Bohemia, and Ireland materialize. The failure of the series was due not to any fault in the idea, which before the end of the century was executed successfully by German and French editors, but to its timing and method."
- Goes into quite a bit of detail about this, but seems to have missed that the Ireland number had already been published. For the other parts mentioned (Greece, Denmark, Bohemia), see the comments below.
- Martin Sutton's The Sin-Complex (1996): "Thoms apparently intended to complete the series with five more volumes of stories from England, Greece, Denmark, Bohemia, and Ireland, but these intentions never came to fruition and the series seems to have ended in failure."
- Sutton seems to have been using Dorson as his source, and also makes the mistake of assuming the Ireland number had not been published. The other proposed future parts were mentioned in story notes in the Germany I, Germany II, and Spain numbers. This doesn't mean that work had begun on these other parts yet, and the way they're talked about makes it look like Thoms intended to carry on producing these as long as he was able to find enough material to publish – the idea that he was planning "to complete the series with five more volumes" seems completely wrong: even the number given "five more" (or perhaps "four more", as the Ireland part had been published) is incorrect – excluding a potential Germany Part IV, he mentioned at least six more parts that were never published:
- "Lays and Legends of England" (Germany I p.36; Spain p.54)
- "Lays and Legends of Germany" to be completed probably in four parts (Germany I p.80)
- "Lays and Legends of Denmark" (Spain p.44)
- "Lays and Legends of Spain: Part II" (Spain p.65)
- "Lays and Legends of Bohemia" (Germany II p.124)
- "Lays and Legends of France: Part II" (Germany II p.125)
- "Lays and Legends of Greece" (Germany II p.125)
- Sutton seems to have been using Dorson as his source, and also makes the mistake of assuming the Ireland number had not been published. The other proposed future parts were mentioned in story notes in the Germany I, Germany II, and Spain numbers. This doesn't mean that work had begun on these other parts yet, and the way they're talked about makes it look like Thoms intended to carry on producing these as long as he was able to find enough material to publish – the idea that he was planning "to complete the series with five more volumes" seems completely wrong: even the number given "five more" (or perhaps "four more", as the Ireland part had been published) is incorrect – excluding a potential Germany Part IV, he mentioned at least six more parts that were never published: