ILLUSTRATED by Katharine Cameron
Edited by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor and Louey
Chisholm
Undine is a novel by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque concerning
Undine, a water spirit who marries a Knight named Huldebrand in order to gain a
soul. It is an early German romance, which has been translated into English and
other languages. During the nineteenth century the book was very popular and
was, according to The Times in 1843, "a book which, of all others, if you ask
for it at a foreign library, you are sure to find engaged". The story, which has
resemblences to The Little Mermaid by Andersen, is descended from
Melusine, the French folk-tale of a water-sprite who marries a knight on
condition that he shall never see her on Saturdays, when she resumes her mermaid
shape. It was also inspired by a text of Paracelsus. An unabridged English
edition of the story published in 1909 was illustrated by Arthur Rackham. George
Macdonald thought Undine "the most beautiful" of all fairy stories, and
the references to it in such works as Charlotte Yonge's The Daisy Chain
and Louisa Alcott's Little Women show that it was one of the best loved
of all books for many 19th-century children.
— Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
