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Dearest Squad,
YES.
Before a passel of y’all @ me, my spelling of “dwarf”, “dwarfs,” and “dwarfen” in all the Tales of Arilland was a CONSCIOUS CHOICE.
Is is not incorrect.
Don’t believe me? Look it up. (And if you even think about asking any kind of AI, I’m gonna Gibbs-slap you right now. You need to do the damn research on this one your own self.)
I received Favorite Tales of Grimm & Andersen published by Exeter Books in 1983 (with illustrations by Czech artist Jiří Trnka) from my Canadian French grandmother on my 8th birthday (1984) and read it multiple times from cover to cover. Inside this book, Sleeping Beauty’s name was Briar Rose, Cinderella’s sisters chopped off pieces of their own feet, The Little Mermaid became foam on the waves every time, and Snow-White was the quiet and gentle sister of the far more boisterous Rose-Red.
That other chick with the same name wasn’t even in this book. But I was head over heels in love with fairy tales by then, and Alice (thanks to Disney re-releasing the film in 1981), so my collection of folklore and fairy tales quickly grew. My bookshelves were filled with leprechauns and goblins and giants and dwarfs and all sorts of other enchanted men and beasties.
Imagine my surprise when I started reading fantasy fiction that referred to them as “dwarves.”
I never really understood why. I just accepted this as a thing: fairy tales have “dwarfs” and fantasy fiction has “dwarves.” Neither one is incorrect.
Now…enter the Age of Search Engines.
Turns out, fellow fantasy author and Capricorn J.R.R. Tolkien worked on—in addition to many other things—the Oxford English Dictionary. This man was an extremely well-educated genius, a philosopher and a linguist. He was firmly in the camp of knife = knives, therefore dwarf = dwarves.
Okay, cool.
But that doesn’t make “dwarves” 100% correct with no exceptions.
Look, Tolkien had serious feelings about this decision. So do I. And when I shuffle off this mortal coil one day and cross over to the Other Side, he and I will sit down to tea and have an extremely animated discussion about this.
(Can you even imagine….? I’m giggling already.)
Anyway.
While the Woodcutter Sisters series is YES fantasy fiction, it is very specifically fairy tale fantasy, and I chose to use the “dwarf, dwarfs, dwarfen” spelling to honor those roots. Like, there are actual reasons (which I hope to figure out how to sufficiently explain by the time I finish Book 6).
If your reading roots began in the Juvenile Fiction section of the Public Library, that is totally awesome. You were raised on dwarves. Cool.
My reading as a child was more influenced by 398.2 (which we library nerds know as the dewey decimal assignation for the section in non-fiction pertaining to fairy tales and folklore). I was the toddler reading fiction in the non-fiction section. (Stick me anywhere and I will find a way to be different, I swear…)
Y’all know me. I love J.R.R.T. I celebrate Lord of the Rings and Taxes Day every year on his birthday (Jan 3 — mine is Jan 11). He and I agree on a lot of things when it comes to fairy stories. We just disagree on the dwarfs/dwarves matter. I’m totally okay with that.
And now, I hope you are, too.
(Spoilers: Just wait until Book 6, where I introduce an “elfin” shoemaker in the first chapter. That’s right. Elf/elfs/elfin. Also…elfs in my world are non-binary. The elf pronouns are ey/eir/em. Brace yourselves!)
Love always,
xox
Princess Alethea
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