Laura Gonzenbach, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

Laura Gonzenbach

Swiss fairy tale collector (1842-1878)

Date of Birth: 26-Dec-1842

Place of Birth: Messina, Sicily, Italy

Date of Death: 16-Jul-1878

Profession: fairy tales writer, collector of fairy tales

Nationality: Switzerland

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

Laura Gonzenbach (1842–1878) was a Swiss fairy tale collector, active in Messina, who collected fairy tales in a number of Sicilian dialects. Gonzenbach was born in a Swiss-German community of Sicily, to a German-speaking mercantile family.
(Her sister, Magdelena, began a school in Messina.) She became well educated and gained renown for the stories she gathered from a diverse range of sources, often other women.
After the prompting of Otto Hartwig for material to append to a historical survey of the country, she produced what would become an important two volume collection, Sicilianische Märchen (Sicilian folk-tales), published in 1870.
Her seminal works collected tales given verbally, by peasants or other working and middle classes; the assemblage is noted as one of the few major collections of the nineteenth century to be compiled by a woman.