author

Verra Xenophontovna

A Russian-born storyteller who retold traditional tales for English-speaking children, she is best known for Folk Tales from the Russian, first published in 1903. Her work helped bring old Slavic legends and nursery-story traditions to new readers at a moment when she believed that oral folklore was beginning to fade.

1 Audiobook

Folk Tales from the Russian

Folk Tales from the Russian

by Kalamatiano De Blumenthal, Verra Xenophontovna

About the author

Verra Xenophontovna Kalamatiano de Blumenthal is known for Folk Tales from the Russian, a collection of Russian folk stories retold in English and first published in 1903. In the book’s foreword, she explains that she wanted to preserve stories passed down by peasant storytellers and nurses, and to share that imaginative world with American children.

Rather than presenting herself as a novelist, she appears chiefly as a reteller and cultural bridge: someone taking traditional Russian tales and reshaping them for a younger English-speaking audience. Her collection includes enduring figures and motifs from Russian folklore, such as Baba Yaga, Ivan Tsarevitch, and Father Frost.

Reliable biographical details about her life are scarce in the sources I could confirm, so much of her personal background remains unclear. What does stand out is the purpose behind her best-known book: preserving and passing along folk traditions that she felt were vanishing in modern life.