The Blue Fairy Book

The first volume in Andrew Lang’s celebrated series of coloured Fairy Books, this 1889 collection gathered dozens of tales that many English readers would meet here for the first time. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Puss in Boots, Hansel and Gretel, and Jack the Giant-Killer sit side by side, drawn from Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, the Arabian Nights, and Norse legend. Lang and his team of translators, chiefly his wife Leonora, retold each story in clear, unfussy prose meant to be read aloud. The book helped spark a lasting revival of the fairy tale and shaped children’s reading for generations that followed. A free PDF and EPUB edition is available here.