Lang's Fairy Books

The Langs' Fairy Books
Rumpelstiltskin from The Blue Fairy Book, illustrated by Henry J. Ford.

The Blue Fairy Book
The Red Fairy Book
The Blue Poetry Book
The Green Fairy Book
The True Story Book
The Yellow Fairy Book
The Red True Story Book
The Animal Story Book
The Pink Fairy Book
The Arabian Nights' Entertainments
The Red Book of Animal Stories
The Grey Fairy Book
The Violet Fairy Book
The Book of Romance
The Crimson Fairy Book
The Brown Fairy Book
The Red Romance Book
The Orange Fairy Book
The Olive Fairy Book
The Red Book of Heroes
The Lilac Fairy Book
The All Sorts of Stories Book
The Book of Saints and Heroes
The Strange Story Book
AuthorAndrew Lang
Nora Lang
IllustratorHenry J. Ford (and others)
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreFairy tales
Published1889–1913
No. of books25

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.

Leonora Blanche Alleyne (1851–1933) was an English author, editor, and translator. Known to her family and friends as Nora, she assumed editorial control of the series in the 1890s,[1] while her husband, Andrew Lang (1844–1912), a Scots poet, novelist, and literary critic, edited the series and wrote prefaces for its entire run.

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 authorship and translation of the Coloured Fairy Books is often and incorrectly attributed to Andrew Lang alone. Nora is not named on the front cover or spines of any of the Coloured Fairy Books, which all tout Andrew as their editor. However, as Andrew acknowledges in a preface to The Lilac Fairy Book (1910), "The fairy books have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other languages."

The 12 Coloured Fairy Books were illustrated by Henry Justice Ford, with credit for the first two volumes shared by G. P. Jacomb-Hood and Lancelot Speed, respectively.[3] A. Wallis Mills also contributed some illustrations.

  1. ^ Day, Andrea (2017-09-19). ""Almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang": Nora Lang, Literary Labour, and the Fairy Books". Women's Writing. 26 (4): 400–420. doi:10.1080/09699082.2017.1371938. S2CID 164414996.
  2. ^ Anita Silvey, Children's Books and Their Creators, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995; p. 387.
  3. ^ Richard Dalby (1997). "Ford, H J". In John Clute; John Grant (eds.). Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Retrieved 2016-10-31. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |website= ignored (help)