The Crimson Fairy Book - Hardcover

Lang, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1421800063 ISBN 13: 9781421800066

Publisher: 1st World Library - Literary Society, 2006

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Each Fairy Book demands a preface from the Editor, and these introductions are inevitably both mono-tonous and unavailing. A sense of literary honesty compels the Editor to keep repeating that he is the Editor, and not the author of the Fairy Tales, just as a distinguished man of science is only the Editor, not the Author of Nature. Like nature, popular tales are too vast to be the creation of a single modern mind. The Editor's business is to hunt for collections of these stories told by peasant or savage grandmothers in many climes, from New Caledonia to Zululand; from the frozen snows of the Polar regions to Greece, or Spain, or Italy, or far Lochaber. When the tales are found they are adapted to the needs of British children by various hands, the Editor doing little beyond guarding the interests of propriety, and toning down to mild reproofs the tortures inflicted on wicked step-mothers, and other naughty characters.

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About the Author

Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him. He was born in Selkirk and was the eldest of the eight children. On 17 April 1875 he married Leonora Blanche Alleyne. 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. He died of angina pectoris at the Tor-na-Coille Hotel in Banchory, survived by his wife. He was buried in the cathedral precincts at St Andrews.

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