Is there a list of fairytale sources anywhere?

[Rumpelstiltskin]

I'm starting with the European sources, because those from other parts of the world are less familiar to me, except the Arabian One Thousand and One Nights. There is a blurring line between Western European, Eastern European and Russian tales. We have the collections by the Brothers Grimm, Norwegian Folktales by Asbjørnsen and Moe, English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs and Russian Fairy Tales by Alexander Afanasyev. Then there are individual authors like E. T. A. Hoffmann and Hans Christian Andersen.

Disney have adapted several of the most famous ones, like Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella and The Frog Princess. But there should still be plenty more to pick from.

[JeanGreyForever]

Charles Perrault is French and a lot of the Grimm's fairy tales were based on his but with a German twist. Perrault's version of Cinderella is the most iconic one that the Disney film adapted. He's also done Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Bluebeard, and Donkeyskin.

Madame d'Aulnoy is another French writer. Her fairy tales aren't as well-known but she wrote some like The White Cat, The Blue Bird, Princess Rosette, etc. She also wrote The White Doe which is a lot like Sleeping Beauty.

Madame de Villeneuve was heavily inspired by both Perrault and d'Aulnoy and she wrote the original version of Beauty and the Beast which is essentially book-length. Madame Beaumont then wrote a truncated version of Beauty and the Beast which is the most popular fairy tale version of the story and what Cocteau's film and the Disney animated film are based off of.

There is also Giambattista Basile, an Italian, who came before the Grimms Brothers. His Italian version of Rapunzel (Petrosinella) is the oldest version of the story before the popular German version. His is also considered the most feminist version of Rapunzel. There was a 2015 film called Tale of Tales based off of Basile's fairy tales which had Salma Hayek as the lead.

Mademoiselle de La Force was another French woman (who was a contemporary of Charles Perrault I believe) who then adapted her own version of Petrosinella called Persinette. So this is the French version of Rapunzel and it's closer to the Grimm's German version than Basile's Italian one.

Andrew Lang is most famous for taking a compilation of fairy tales from almost every known culture (but mostly European) and publishing them together in his Fairy Books starting with The Blue Fairy Book.

Oscar Wilde, best known for The Picture of Dorian Gray and an assortment of plays, also had his own collection of fairy tales called The Happy Prince.

Alexander Pushkin also wrote some Russian fairy tales. His most famous fairy tale (or the one I've most consistently heard of) is The Tale of Tsar Saltan which features an enchanted swan princess. Although plotwise, it isn't anything like Swan Lake beyond that.

You mentioned Hoffman, but the Italian Carlo Collodi (author of Pinocchio) is also considered a fairy tale author. The Scottish George MacDonald is considered the pioneer of fantasy literature and authors like Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, J.M. Barrie, and Lewis Carroll were all inspired by him. Basically every major fantasy author you can think of in the 20th century. MacDonald is best known for The Princess and the Goblin, The Light Princess, and At the Back of the North Wind.

L. Frank Baum is considered the author of the first American fairy tale, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote The Wizard of Oz because he felt that Americans needed their own fairy tales with American values and not the typical European story elements that present themselves over and over and Baum published 14/15 books in the Oz series alongside other fantasy books.

[Disney Duster]

Boy do you know a lot JeanGreyForever! How comprehensive!

[JeanGreyForever]

Thank you, I only remembered the first five paragraphs off the top of my head. I googled fairy tale authors to see if I was missing anyone and then remembered Lang, Wilde, Pushkin, Collodi, MacDonald, and Baum. Wilde and the latter three aren't always characterized that way so I wasn't sure whether to include them or not. But since Rumpelstiltskin included Hoffman in his original post, I thought it would be fair to include these authors as well.

[Disney Duster]

I agree, that was all right on!

[Rumpelstiltskin]

That's a lot of additional names. Hopefully there will be a complete list someday, if it's not already there hidden away somewhere.

The way I see it, there are two types of stories; fairytales written by named authors, and folktales where the original authors are long forgotten and which have existed mostly in oral form till someone collects them in a book. Sometimes there are different versions of them, depending on where and who which writes them down.

And there are mythology and legends.

Then there are stories that are too long to be called fairytales. I mentioned ETA Hoffmann mostly because of the position that the Nutcracker has. Also Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows are so familiar that they gives many a similar feeling as fairytales.

I have heard about George MacDonald, but have never read anything yet. Anything that would work as a Disney adaptation?
Don't remember where I read it, but apparently Washington Irving was the one that started the tradition of so-called fantastic literature in America, with his two stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, that latter still waiting for Disney. Must confess I haven't read those either, but I have heard Sleepy Hollow is the kind of story where the reader is left wondering if it really happened or not.

[JeanGreyForever]

Most of the popular fairy tales like Snow White, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, etc. would count as folktales then which have been passed down the generations by unnamed storytellers and then they are brought back to the spotlight by collectors of these tales like Perrault or the Grimms who publish them for the first time so they won't be forgotten.

And mythology has a lot of connections as well because the first ever Beauty and the Beast story was Cupid and Psyche. The wicked fairy from Sleeping Beauty is essentially Eris, the goddess of discord, from Greek mythology in the story that started off the Trojan War. Snow White's poison apple could potentially be inspired by the pomegranate that traps Persephone in Hades' underworld which could also be considered a Beauty and the Beast pairing. Sindbad the Sailor drew heavily from Greek myths as well.

Besides The Nutcracker, Hoffman also wrote The Sandman which became the famous ballet Coppellia.

His The Princess and the Goblin was adapted into an animated film in the 90s by a non-Disney studio but it's pretty bad. Shirley Temple had a show in the late 50s/early 60s where she adapted fairy tales and classic stories for TV and The Princess and the Goblin was one such story. I think she played the Princess Irene herself. Mary Wickes (who plays Laverne in Disney's Hunchback) was also in it.

Yes, I'm pretty sure you're right about Irving. I've never read him myself either but Sleepy Hollow (the Disney version) is pretty much identical to the book and that also features the ambiguous ending on what happened to Ichabod and if the Headless Horseman was ever real or not.