E. Ferla

Russian fairy tales from the Russian of Polevoi, by R. Nisbet Bain, illustrated by Noel L. Nisbet; 1915; Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. A collection of Russian fairytales translated from the Russian of Nikolai Polevoy, a notable editor, writer, translator in the early 19th century. The translations were made by Robert Nisbet Bain, a British historian who worked for the British Museum, and a polyglot who could reportedly speak over twenty languages fluently. He famously taught himself Hungarian in order that he could read the works of Mór Jókai in the original after first reading him in German, going on to become the most prolific translator into English from Hungarian in the nineteenth century. The book is housed at the Internet Archive, donated by the Boston Public Library. Sign up to get our free fortnightly newsletter which shall deliver direct to your inbox the latest brand new article and a digest of the most recent collection items. Simply add your details to the form below and click the link you receive via email to confirm your subscription!

Researchers are delving into the mystery surrounding two 3,000-year-old skeletons which appear to be made up of at least six different people who died hundreds of years apart.

The researchers now believe that large extended families, living under one roof, may have shared their homes with the mummified remains of their dead ancestors, before deliberately putting the bodies together to look like single corpses – possibly in an attempt to demonstrate the uniting of different families.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at University College London who led the research, said: “It looks like these individuals had been cut up and put back together to look like one person.”

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Story: Richard Gray, The Telegraph | Photo: The Telegraph