The Facetious Nights of Straparola

The Facetious Nights of Straparola, also known as The Nights of Straparola, is a short story collection first published in 1550 by Giovanni Francesco Straparola, an Italian writer and collector of folk tales. It appears in two volumes and brings together 75 stories. The book is shaped as a framed collection, with the stories gathered into a literary setting rather than presented as one continuous plot. Its mix of fairy tales, folk material, and comic storytelling gives it a distinctive place in early European prose.

This is a good choice for readers interested in the early history of fairy tales and in how oral material moved into written literature. It is often noted as one of the first European storybooks to include fairy tales, and it helped shape later fairy-tale writing. The book fits readers who like short forms, older storytelling conventions, and texts that sit between folklore and literary fiction. If you are curious about where familiar fairy-tale patterns began to take shape, this is a useful place to look.