Lang's Fairy Books
The
Langs' Fairy Books are a
series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889
and 1913
by Andrew 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 Books or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many
Colors. In all, the volumes feature 798 stories, besides the 153 poems
in The Blue Poetry Book.
Andrew
Lang (1844–1912) was a Scots poet,
novelist, and literary
critic. He initially edited the series and
wrote prefaces for its entire run, while his wife, the translator and author
Leonora Blanche Alleyne (1851 – 10 July 1933), known to friends and family as
Nora, assumed editorial control of the series in the 1890s.[1] She and other translators did a large portion of the
translating and retelling of the actual stories, as acknowledged in the
prefaces. Four of the volumes from 1908 to 1912 were published by "Mrs.
Lang".
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
12 Coloured Fairy Books were illustrated by Henry Justice Ford
— the first two volumes shared with G.
P. Jacomb-Hood and Lancelot
Speed respectively, and the sequels
alone.[3] A.
Wallis Mills also contributed some
illustrations.
The Fairy Books
Origin and influence
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 oral primary
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, and the collections of Kate Douglas Wiggin
and Nora Archibald Smith.
Sources
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!
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.
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