Lisa Bennett reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree for ABR
Essay

Lisa Bennett reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree for ABR

Melissa AshleyLeave a comment

Thank you to Australian Book Review and Lisa Bennett for reviewing The Bee and the Orange Tree. In their earliest incarnations, fairy tales are gruesome stories riddled with murder, cannibalism, and mutilation. Written in early seventeenth-century Italy, Giambattista Basile’s Cinderella snaps her stepmother’s neck with the lid of a trunk. This motif reappears in the… Continue reading Lisa Bennett reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree for ABR

The woman behind the first fairy tale: Phillip Adams interviews Melissa Ashley for Late Night Live
Interview

The woman behind the first fairy tale: Phillip Adams interviews Melissa Ashley for Late Night Live

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On Monday, 4th November, I had the extraordinary honour of being interviewed by Phillip Adams for Late Night Live, to discuss the heroine of my new novel, The Bee and the Orange Tree, Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy. You can listen to the podcast here Marie Catherine D’Aulnoy was the first author to use the term ‘Fairy… Continue reading The woman behind the first fairy tale: Phillip Adams interviews Melissa Ashley for Late Night Live

Booktopia Books Podcast Chats to Melissa Ashley
Interview · Presentation

Booktopia Books Podcast Chats to Melissa Ashley

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In late October I had the pleasure of dropping in to Booktopia’s Sydney offices to sign copies of The Bee and the Orange Tree and to record a podcast with Ben Hunter and Olivia Fricot on delving into the life of 17th century French writer Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy. Melissa Ashley is a writer, poet, birder… Continue reading Booktopia Books Podcast Chats to Melissa Ashley

Samantha Brennan reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree
Review

Samantha Brennan reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree

Melissa Ashley1 Comment

Why I had to pick it up That blurb! Okay, let me go back a little… Right now, I’m wrists-deep in metaphorical ink, writing and plotting my middle-grade fantasy series Stella Duke and the Sandgirl’s Curse. The history and politics of the magical world I’m painstakingly building have their beginnings in French author Charles Perrault’s 1697… Continue reading Samantha Brennan reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree

The woman who coined the term ‘fairy tale’ risked prison to write coded messages of rebellion
Articles

The woman who coined the term ‘fairy tale’ risked prison to write coded messages of rebellion

Melissa AshleyLeave a comment

RN By Anna Kelsey-Sugg for Late Night Live Updated 7 Nov 2019, 11:55am In 1600s Paris, one woman undertook an act of rebellion. Her weapon was fairy tales Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy — who’d been married off at 15 to an abusive man three decades her elder — slipped messages of resistance into her popular stories, risking jail in the process. D’Aulnoy… Continue reading The woman who coined the term ‘fairy tale’ risked prison to write coded messages of rebellion

The first fairytales were feminist critiques of patriarchy. We need to revive their legacy
Articles

The first fairytales were feminist critiques of patriarchy. We need to revive their legacy

Melissa AshleyLeave a comment

The women who created the first fairytales were far more radical than the Brothers Grimm have led us to believe Most revolutions begin quietly, in narrative. Take, for instance, fairytales. The popular understanding is that fairytales evolved exclusively from oral folktellers – from the uneducated “Mother Goose” nurse, passing into the imaginations of children by… Continue reading The first fairytales were feminist critiques of patriarchy. We need to revive their legacy

Q&A with Melissa Ashley on her novel ‘The Bee and the Orange Tree’
Interview

Q&A with Melissa Ashley on her novel ‘The Bee and the Orange Tree’

Melissa AshleyLeave a comment

https://writersvictoria.org.au/writing-life/featured-writers/qa-melissa-ashley-on-her-novel-the-bee-and-the-orange-tree By: Melissa Ashley interviewed by Tara Mitchell TM: Your second novel, ‘The Bee and the Orange Tree’, tells the tale of Marie Catherine and her battle for French women’s’ equality in 1699. How did you come across Marie Catherine and what inspired you to tell her story? MA: I discovered Marie Catherine while researching another project,… Continue reading Q&A with Melissa Ashley on her novel ‘The Bee and the Orange Tree’

Book Review: The Bee and the Orange Tree by Melissa Ashley
Review

Book Review: The Bee and the Orange Tree by Melissa Ashley

Melissa AshleyLeave a comment

OCTOBER 30, 2019 / THERESA SMITH WRITES The Bee and the Orange Tree… About the Book: It’s 1699, and the salons of Paris are bursting with the creative energy of fierce, independent-minded women. But outside those doors, the patriarchal forces of Louis XIV and the Catholic Church are moving to curb their freedoms. In this battle for… Continue reading Book Review: The Bee and the Orange Tree by Melissa Ashley

Cass Moriarty reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree
Review

Cass Moriarty reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree

Melissa Ashley1 Comment

Author Melissa Ashley came to prominence when her debut novel, The Birdman’s Wife, expertly re-imagined the life of Elizabeth Gould. Following this theme of uncovering the lives of fascinating but largely forgotten women from history, her second novel The Bee and the Orange Tree (Affirm Press 2019) is an engaging and previously untold story about Frenchwoman Baroness Marie… Continue reading Cass Moriarty reviews The Bee and the Orange Tree

The Bee and the Orange Tree
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The Bee and the Orange Tree

Melissa AshleyLeave a comment

The Bee and the Orange Tree (Affirm Press, 2019) Buy Here Watch the book trailer It’s 1699, and the salons of Paris are bursting with the creative energy of fierce, independent-minded women. But outside those doors, the patriarchal forces of Louis XIV and the Catholic Church are moving to curb their freedoms. In this battle… Continue reading The Bee and the Orange Tree