Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning

Bunce (1828-99) was a British journalist, newspaper editor, and author who in later life held several important civic roles. He was raised in Birmingham and left school at 14 to work as a printer's apprentice with the Midland Counties Herald where he was given a job as a reporter after writing a letter anonymously calling for Birmingham to have an art gallery. He left the Herald in 1852 to work for Aris's Birmingham Gazette and was promoted to editor there in 1860. The Gazette followed a Tory line and as Bunce was increasingly of a Liberal persuasion, he resigned in 1862 to join the more Liberal Birmingham Daily Post. He also contributed to national periodicals including The Fortnightly Review, Macmillan's Magazine and the National Review, and became a founding fellow of the Institute of Journalists in 1889. In civic life Bunce became a governor and bailiff of the King Edward VI Foundation's Grammar School, sat on the committee that developed Birmingham's first Central Library, and was an organizer of the National Education League. He advocated the foundation of the Birmingham Municipal School of Art, served as a trustee of Mason Science College (the predecessor of the University of Birmingham), and as a magistrate, was a patron of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. As an antiquarian he wrote a number of books on the history of Birmingham institutions, including St Martin's Church, a biography of the industrialist Josiah Mason, and contributed to a work on the artist David Cox. Fairy Tales: Their Origin and Meaning (1878) was written after Bunce delivered a series of well-received Christmas Holiday Lectures on the subject at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, of which he was then senior Vice-President.