Andrew Lang collected a large body of fairy tales in his twelve Fairy Books. You can now access all of the texts online through Project Gutenberg. They have an index by book and an alphabetical listing of all of Lang’s Fairy Tales. These collections include such classic tales as Bluebeard, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltzkin, The Beauty and the Beast and Goldilocks.
When you consider how well-known some of the verses are from these tales, you realize the influence these stories have had over the western world. Nearly everyone brought up speaking English can recite some of these lines and remember the stories that go with them, they remind us vividly of our childhood…
Mirror, mirror, hanging there,
Who in all the land’s most fair?
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your golden hair…
Fe, fa, fi-fo-fum,
I smell the breath of an Englishman.
"Grandmamma, what great eyes you have got…"
It’s wonderful what vivid images these lines evoke for us brought up on these tales.
My only criticism of the Gutenberg collection is that it contains only 4 or 5 illustrations. Most of us remember growing up with these stories with colorful images. Too bad they didn’t include more renderings like the ones above and below.
These are still timeless tales that you can now take on the road in electronic form and enjoy!
Mama Lisa
This article was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 am and is filed under Books & Stories, Countries & Cultures, English, Fairy Books by Andrew Lang, Languages, United Kingdom, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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