The Blue Fairy Book

The Blue Fairy Book gathers 37 fairy tales assembled by Andrew Lang from wildly different traditions -- Grimm, Perrault, the Arabian Nights, Norwegian folklore and more -- retold in plain English prose for Victorian children, with none of the newly invented fairy stories Lang found tiresome. It was here that many readers first met Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin and Hansel and Gretel in a single English volume. The book's runaway success launched Lang's Coloured Fairy Books, a series that would eventually run to twelve volumes compiled largely by his wife Leonora Blanche Lang under his name. The first and most famous of the Coloured Fairy Books.