Tales of Uncle Rimus. Harris J.Ch.

The cunning brother of the fox and the savvy brother rabbit are known in many countries of the world. They are the main characters of the "Tales of Uncle Rimus", a small part of which was first published in our country in 1936 thanks to the translations of M. A. Gershenzon. In total, the vast cycle of these Negro fairy tales includes more than one and a half hundred funny stories in which animals and birds speak and act as people. Now all the stories about the "brothers" are collected under the same cover. In their homeland, in the southern states of the United States, the first book with the tales of Uncle Rimus was published in 1880. Its author was a successful journalist Joel Chandler Harris. At that time, he barely exceeded thirty.

Joel heard about funny little animals from blacks many years ago, when he did not work from a good life on a plantation, which was not far from his house. Then the red -haired young man, the son of an Irish emigrant, became a typewriter in a local printing house for a piece of bread. There he met literary texts. Soon Harris began to write them himself. Not so much time has passed, and his articles, thanks to the literary talent of their author, a boyfriend, the whole Georgia read the knowledge of life and a sense of humor.

Harrisa fascinated not only literature, but also folklore. The tales recorded by him later and collected in books are not only funny fiction. For English -speaking readers, this is also a fixation of those unique dialects that Harris heard on the plantations of the American South. Several collections of fairy tales brought glory to Harris, three more were published after the death of the writer. His house in Atlanta became a kind of Museum of Uncle Rimus. Some critics argued that Harris’s literary talents were greatly exaggerated, and that he just recorded what he heard. The admirers believe that the prose of Harris literally turned the children's literature of that time, because from the thorn bush, into which the brother foxes scolded the brother of the rabbit, later the Potter Rabbit Peter, the vini-flower Milna, was recovered and the Beatrice Potter.