French Classics PDF EPUB Audio

The Tales of Mother Goose

First published: 1697
Pages: 83

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Read by Phil Chenevert · 1 h 57 min · 8 parts

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Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper
17:00
The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood
24:06
Little Thumb
23:02
The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots
11:40
Riquet of the Tuft
17:22
Blue Beard
13:06
The Fairy
6:19
Little Red Riding-hood
5:11

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About this book

Eight stories here did more to shape the modern fairy tale than any book before them. Charles Perrault, retired from decades of royal service, took plots that French nursemaids had told for generations and rewrote them for the salons of Louis XIV's Paris: Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and three more. He kept the old bones and added courtly polish, glass slippers, and a verse moral at the end of each tale, usually sly and sometimes cheerfully cynical about husbands, wives, and ambition. The Grimms came a century later. These came first. This free PDF and EPUB edition carries the classic English translation.

About the author

Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a French lawyer and senior administrator under Louis XIV's minister Colbert, and a member of the Academie francaise who argued the case for modern writers against the ancients. Only after leaving office did he publish the fairy tales that outlived all his official work.

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