Author Description

The Fairy Books, also known as "Coloured" Fairy Books, are a collection of twelve books of fairy tales, each associated with a different color. Andrew Land gathered them from various countries and translated them by Lang's wife and other translators. They also retold many of the stories. The collection has been enormously influential. While he did not collect the stories directly from oral tradition, he can lay claim to the first English translation of many of them. It was first published in 1904. Andrew Lang was a Scottish poet, novelist, and literary critic who lived from 1844 to 1912. Although he did not collect the stories from oral tradition himself, the breadth of his sources, who had originally collected them (with the notable exception of Madame d'Aulnoy), made the collections enormously influential. Many of the stories were first told in English by Lang. Although Lang made the majority of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and retelling of the actual stories, as stated in the prefaces. This book includes an author biography as well as a table of contents that is linked to each chapter (Kindle edition). We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high-quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.