LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD VARIATIONS

September 2, 2012

Often there is more than one version of a folk tale or a fairy tale. Let’s have a look at Little Red Riding-Hood, for instance. In the version found in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book, bottom row up there, third from the right, the final sentence of the story, coming directly on the heels of […]

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THE VIOLET FAIRY BOOK

August 8, 2012

This edition of Andrew Lang’s Violet Fairy Tale Book is illustrated by Robert Venables. The cover illustration is for the Serbian folk tale, ‘The Finest Liar in the World’. Why is the lad riding the giant chicken chasing the giant bee the finest liar in the world? Because he states, among other things: 1. ‘In […]

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2 SNOW QUEENS

June 28, 2012

Hans Christian Andersen wrote quite a good long fairy tale and called it The Snow Queen. Andrew Lang included a version of it in his Pink Fairy Book. The story begins in the Pink Fairy Book as follows: There was once a dreadfully wicked hobgoblin. One day he was in capital spirits because he had […]

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OF “FO FUM” AND “FE FI”

June 14, 2012

I wandered through Andrew Lang’s Red Fairy Book the other day and came across the tale of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. Now, it so happens that when I was growing up, the Giant recited: ‘Fe fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his […]

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THE BROWN FAIRY BOOK

May 3, 2012

Here’s an edition of Andrew Lang’s The Brown Fairy Book illustrated by Omar Rayyan. You can read a tale told by Australian aborigines in there. It’s all about a creature called the Bunyip. It’s a good idea to avoid her. “The side of the pool where she lives is always shunned by everyone, as nobody […]

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THE CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK

April 30, 2012

This is my copy of The Folio Society edition of Andrew Lang’s The Crimson Fairy Book with paintings and decorations by Tim Stevens. Andrew Lang collected folk and fairy tales and bound them up in his books of color. He didn’t write the fairy tales. Well, how did they get invented then? Andrew Lang said, […]

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ANDREW LANG’S CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK

December 27, 2011

I recently added this volume to my collection of Andrew Lang Fairy Books. I now own the blue, the green, the red, the pink, the yellow, the violet, the brown, and now the crimson. So far, ‘Little Wildrose’ is my favorite tale in this volume. Why? Because of the first sentence – Once upon a […]

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THE YELLOW FAIRY BOOK

August 28, 2011
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Gnomes, ogres, trolls, mermaids and giants roam these books. Andrew Lang collected the tales and brought them out over the years in his color specific Fairy Books. The one in the middle up there, The Yellow Fairy Book, is a new version of the one I read and reread as a child. The copy I […]

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