The Blue Fairy Book
Andrew Lang
I read Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book when in High School. My famous Aunt Althea, who lived in New York and always knew the best new books, had given us a new translation of The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, and I read it. It was a strange experience. I read a fairy tale every night. To a teenage kid accustomed to modern literature, they seemed kind of underpowered. Yet, I found myself every evening looking forward to the next one. Somehow the experience of reading the stories was better than the stories themselves. Yes, I know that makes no sense, but that was how it felt to me.
Therefore, after I finished with Grimm, I looked for other collections of fairy tales. Naturally I found my way to Lang's famous Colored Fairy Books. I read most of them -- this single review will be a review of the entire collection. Even though the Colored Fairy Books are collections of stories from other sources, the books were indeed written by Lang and his wife Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang -- that is, they were rewritten, and in many cases translated. The Colored Fairy Books are aimed at children and are severely bowdlerized. I eventually came to feel that the best way to read any of the fairy tales in the Colored Fairy Books is to find the originals -- the Lang versions, alas, are virtually always inferior.
Still, the Langs collected a huge number of fairy tales. Their books were in many cases the first appearance in English of the stories. It is thanks to the Langs that many of our favorite stories became known to English-speaking children.
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