The Blue Fairy Book
Book Description
A Lang was born in Selkirk. He was the eldest of the eight children born to John Lang, the town clerk of Selkirk, and his wife Jane Plenderleath Sellar, who was the daughter of Patrick Sellar, factor to the first duke of Sutherland. On 17 April 1875 he married Leonora Blanche Alleyne, youngest daughter of C. T. Alleyne of Clifton and Barbados. She was (or should have been) variously credited as au...
MoreA Lang was born in Selkirk. He was the eldest of the eight children born to John Lang, the town clerk of Selkirk, and his wife Jane Plenderleath Sellar, who was the daughter of Patrick Sellar, factor to the first duke of Sutherland. On 17 April 1875 he married Leonora Blanche Alleyne, youngest daughter of C. T. Alleyne of Clifton and Barbados. She was (or should have been) variously credited as author, collaborator, and/or translator of Lang's Color/Rainbow Fairy Books he edited. He was educated at Selkirk Grammar School, Loretto, and at the Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews University and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first class in the final classical schools in 1868, becoming a fellow and subsequently honorary fellow of Merton College. As a journalist, poet, critic and historian, he soon made a reputation as one of the most able and versatile writers of the day. In 1906 he was elected FBA. Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, and literary critic. Although he did not collect the stories himself from oral primary sources only Madame d'Aulnoy and Lang had collected tales from such a large variety of sources, which made the collections immensely influential. Lang gave many of the tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and retelling of the actual stories. He died of angina pectoris at the Tor-na-Coille Hotel in Banchory, Banchory, survived by his wife. He was buried in the cathedral precincts at St Andrews. Andrew Lang's Fairy Books-also known as Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors-are a series of twelve collections of fairy tales, published between 1889 and 1910. Each volume is distinguished by its own color. In all, 437 tales from a broad range of cultures and countries are presented. The series was immensely popular, helped by Lang's reputation in folklore, 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. It inspired such as imitators like 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. 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. When this is "Grimm" or "Madame d'Aulnoy" or attributed to a specific collection, the stories can be tracked down, but other notes are less helpful. For instance, "The Wonderful Birch" is listed only as "From the Russo-Karelian". The collections were specifically intended for children, and, as Lang explained in the prefaces to the books, bowdlerized. J.R.R. Tolkien, in his "On Fairy-Stories" (1939) stated that while he appreciated the collections, he 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. Here, unlike "The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body" or other similar stories, the monkey merely claims that his heart is outside his body. However, many fairy tale collectors include tales with no strictly marvelous elements. The first edition consisted of 5000 copies, which sold for 6 shillings each. The book assembled a wide range of tales, with seven from the Brothers Grimm, five from Madame d'Aulnoy, three from the Arabian Nights, and four Norwegian fairytales, among other sources.
| Publisher | CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform |
| Binding | Paperback (107 editions) |
| Reading Level | Uncategorized
|
| # of Pages | 190 |
| ISBN-10 | 1500821284 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1500821289 |
| Publication Date | 08/13/2014 |
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