The Langs' Fairy Books are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913byAndrew Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne. The best known books of the series are the 12 collections of fairy tales also known as Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy BooksorAndrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors. In all, the volumes feature 798 stories, besides the 153 poemsinThe Blue Poetry Book.
The Blue Fairy Book The Red Fairy Book The Blue Poetry Book The Green Fairy Book The True Story Book The Yellow Fairy Book The Red True Story Book The Animal Story Book The Pink Fairy Book The Arabian Nights' Entertainments The Red Book of Animal Stories The Grey Fairy Book The Violet Fairy Book The Book of Romance The Crimson Fairy Book The Brown Fairy Book The Red Romance Book The Orange Fairy Book The Olive Fairy Book The Red Book of Heroes The Lilac Fairy Book The All Sorts of Stories Book The Book of Saints and Heroes The Strange Story Book
Leonora Blanche Alleyne (1851–1933) was an English author, editor, and translator. Known to her family and friends as Nora, she assumed editorial control of the series in the 1890s,[1] while her husband, Andrew Lang (1844–1912), a Scotspoet, novelist, and literary critic, edited the series and wrote prefaces for its entire run.
According to Anita Silvey, "The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession—literary criticism; fiction; poems; books and articles on anthropology, mythology, history, and travel ... he is best recognized for the works he did not write."[2]
The authorship and translation of the Coloured Fairy Books is often and incorrectly attributed to Andrew Lang alone. Nora is not named on the front cover or spines of any of the Coloured Fairy Books, which all tout Andrew as their editor. However, as Andrew acknowledges in a preface to The Lilac Fairy Book (1910), "The fairy books have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other languages."
edit"The Crown Returns to the Queen of the Fishes". Illustration by H. J. Ford for Andrew Lang's The Orange Fairy BookFolio Society editions of the Coloured Fairy Books
The best-known volumes of the series are the 12 Fairy Books, each of which is distinguished by its own color. The Langs did not collect any fairy tales from oralprimary sources, yet only they and Madame d'Aulnoy (1651–1705) have collected tales from such a large variety of sources. These collections have been immensely influential; the Langs gave many of the tales their first appearance in English. Andrew selected the tales for the first four books, while Nora took over the series thereafter.[4] She and other translators did a large portion of the translating and retelling of the actual stories.
Lang's urge to gather and publish fairy tales was rooted in his own experience with the folk and fairy tales of his home territory along the Anglo-Scottish border. British fairy tale collections were rare at the time; Dinah Craik's The Fairy Book (1869) was a lonely precedent. According to Roger Lancelyn Green, Lang "was fighting against the critics and educationists of the day" who judged the traditional tales' "unreality, brutality, and escapism to be harmful for young readers, while holding that such stories were beneath the serious consideration of those of mature age".[5] Over a generation, Lang's books worked a revolution in this public perception.
The series was immensely popular, helped by Lang's reputation as a folklorist and by the packaging device of the uniform books. The series proved of great influence in children's literature, increasing the popularity of fairy tales over tales of real life.[6] It inspired such imitators as English Fairy Tales (1890) and More English Fairy Tales (1894) by Joseph Jacobs. Other followers included the American The Oak-Tree Fairy Book (1905), The Elm-Tree Fairy Book (1909), and The Fir-Tree Fairy Book (1912) series edited by Clifton Johnson (author), and the collections of Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibald Smith.
Some of Lang's collected stories were included without any attribution at all (e.g., "The Blue Mountains"), and the rest are listed with brief notes. The sources can be tracked down when given as "Grimm" or "Madame d'Aulnoy" or attributed to a specific collection, but other notes are less helpful. For instance, "The Wonderful Birch" is listed only as "from the Russo-Karelian". Lang repeatedly explained in the prefaces that the tales which he told were all old and not his, and that he found new fairy tales no match for them:
But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: "Flowers and fruits, and other winged things". These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl wakes up and finds that he has been dreaming.
Such are the new fairy stories. May we be preserved from all the sort of them!
The collections were specifically intended for children and were bowdlerised, as Lang explained in his prefaces. J. R. R. Tolkien stated in his essay "On Fairy-Stories" (1939) that he appreciated the collections but objected to his editing the stories for children. He also criticized Lang for including stories without magical elements in them, with "The Heart of a Monkey" given as an example, where the monkey claims that his heart is outside his body, unlike "The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body" or other similar stories. However, many fairy tale collectors include tales with no strictly marvelous elements.
The first edition consisted of 5,000 copies, which sold for 6 shillings each. The book assembled a wide range of tales, with seven from the Brothers Grimm, five from Madame d'Aulnoy, three from the Arabian Nights, and four Norwegian fairytales, among other sources.[7] The Blue Fairy Book was the first volume in the series, and so it contains some of the best known tales, taken from a variety of sources.
The Red Fairy Book appeared at Christmas 1890 in a first printing of 10,000 copies. Sources include French, Russian, Danish, and Romanian tales as well as Norse mythology.
In his Preface to this volume, Lang expressed the view that it would be "probably the last" of the collection. Their continuing popularity, however, demanded subsequent collections. In The Green Fairy Book, the third in the series, Lang has assembled stories from Spanish and Chinese traditions.
Its initial printing was 15,000 copies. The Yellow Fairy Book is a collection of tales from all over the world. It features many tales from Hans Christian Andersen.
Contains 65 stories about animals. Some of them are simple accounts of how animals live in the wild. Others are stories about pets, or remarkable wild animals, or about hunting expeditions. Many are taken from Alexandre Dumas.
"'Tom': an Adventure in the Life of a Bear in Paris"
Contains 46 stories about real and mythical animals. Some of them are simple accounts of how animals live in the wild. Others are stories about pets, or remarkable wild animals, or about hunting expeditions.
Romania, Japan, Serbia, Lithuania, Africa, Portugal, and Russia are among the sources of these 35 stories that tell of a haunted forest, chests of gold coins, a magical dog, and a man who outwits a dragon.
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Contains 29 stories from various medieval and Renaissance romances of chivalry, adapted for children. Includes stories about Don Quixote, Charlemagne, Bevis of Hampton and Guy of Warwick.
Published after Andrew Lang's death, with an introduction by Leonora Blanche Lang. Contains thirty-four stories on a variety of subjects, including ghost stories, Native American legends, true stories, and tales from Washington Irving.
^Roger Lancelyn Green, "Andrew Lang in Fairyland", in: Sheila Egoff, G. T. Stubbs, and L. F. Ashley, eds., Only Connect: Readings on Children's Literature, New York, Oxford University Press; second edition, 1980; p. 250.
^Betsy Hearne, "Booking the Brothers Grimm: Art, Adaptations and Economics", p 221 James M. McGlathery, ed. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale, ISBN0-252-01549-5