William Bernard McCarthy is professor emeritus of English at Pennsylvania State University. His previous books are The Ballad Matrix: Personality, Milieu, and the Oral Tradition and Jack in Two Worlds: Contemporary North American Tales and Their Tellers.

For years many folklorists have denied the possibility of a truly American folk or fairy tale. They have argued that the tales found in the United States are watered-down derivatives of European fare. With this gathering, William Bernard McCarthy compiles evidence strongly to the contrary.

Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales represents these tales as they have been told in the United States from Revolutionary days until the present. To capture this richness, tales are grouped in chapters that represent regional and ethnic groups, including Iberian, French, German, British, Irish, other European, African American, and Native American. These tales are drawn from published collections, journals, and archives, and from fieldwork by McCarthy and his colleagues.

Created along the nationalist model of the Brothers Grimm yet as diverse in its voices and themes as the nation it represents, Cinderella in America shows these tales truly merit the designation American.