Other editions of book The Lilac Fairy Book

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First and foremost, always and forever, among tales for children come the fairy tales. What were childhood without the fairy tale? That child who has never wandered through the magic gardens of Fairyland is unfortunate indeed. But that child does not exist, for the mind and heart of every child, even all unaided, will make for itself a fairyland out of anything and nothing. But the art of writing fairy tales seems to be another thing that has vanished with the vanished childhood of the race. The best fairy tales are always the old ones, stories that were never really written, but just grew in the telling as they passed down through generations of fireside evenings. They were told or enjoyed by grown men and women in an earlier, more naive age, and they never lose their appeal to the child in us as to the children around us now. As to new fairy stories, well, Mr. Andrew Lang, the untiring editor, who makes it possible to unearth new-old stories every year and dress them out in a new colour of raiment for the Christmas tree, says some very unkind things of them in his latest offering, The Lilac Fairy Book . "The three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome," he says. "Their fairies try to be funny and fail, or they try to preach and succeed. Real fairies never preach or talk slang-nobody can write a new fairy tale; the thing is impossible." The tenor of Mr. Lang's reproach of modern writers of fairy tales is that they attempt to write just for children and therefore fail. Possibly he may be right! But we will forgive him his feeling against the writers who prefer to write rather than to edit, for the sake of the fine new-old stories he has found for us here. It is really astonishing how Mr. Lang goes on unearthing so many new stories-new-old is what we mean- every year. Some of the stories in this new book have come from Ireland, some from the Highlands of Scotland, some from wild Wales.

This is the third of twelve colored Fairy Books. The stories in all the books are borrowed from many countries; some are French, some German, some Russian, some Italian, some Scottish, some English, one Chinese. These fairy tales are the oldest stories in the world. Some were made, no doubt, not only to amuse, but to teach goodness. You see, in the tales, that the child who is kind to beasts, and polite, and generous, and brave, always comes out best.

“The Lilac Fairy Book”, the twelfth in Andrew Lang’s “Coloured” Fairy Book series, was originally published in 1910. This edition contains all 33 of the original stories and all 52 of the original illustrations. *** The collections were specifically intended for children, and consequently edited for that end. *** When Andrew began publishing these books there were almost no English fairy tale books in circulation. The series proved of great influence in children’s literature, and inspired a host of imitators. The series also proved to be an inspiration to J.R. Tolken and his Middle-Earth collection of novels. *** This book contains these stories: The Shifty Lad, The False Prince and the True, The Jogi’s Punishment, The Heart of a Monkey, The Fairy Nurse, A Lost Paradise, How Brave Walter Hunted Wolves, The King of the Waterfalls, A French Puck, The Three Crowns, The Story of a Very Bad Boy, The Brown Bear of Norway, Little Lasse, ‘Moti’, The Enchanted Deer, A Fish Story, The Wonderful Tune, The Rich Brother and the Poor Brother, The One-Handed Girl, The Bones of Djulung, The Sea King’s Gift, The Raspberry Worm, The Stones of Plouhinec, The Castle of Kerglas, The Battle of the Birds, The Lady of the Fountain, The Four Gifts, The Groac’h of the Isle of Lok, The Escape of the Mouse, The Believing Husbands, The Hoodie-Crow, The Brownie of the Lake, and The Winning of Olwen. * * * * Check out the other Andrew Lang books published by Flying Chipmunk Publishing at www.FlyingChipmunkPublishing.com, or Friend us on Facebook for our latest releases.

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Andrew Lang's Fairy Books — also known as Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors — are a series of twelve collections of fairy tales, published between 1889 and 1910. Each volume is distinguished by its own color. In all, 437 tales from a broad range of cultures and countries are presented. Stories in this volume include : The King of the Waterfalls, The Escape of the Mouse, The Brown Bear of Norway and The Lady of the Fountain. Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a Scots poet, novelist, and literary critic. Although he did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally — with the notable exception of Madame d'Aulnoy — made the collections immensely influential. Lang gave many of the tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and retelling of the actual stories.

What cases are you engaged in at present?' 'Are you stopping many teeth just now?' 'What people have you converted lately?' Do ladies put these questions to the men - lawyers, dentists, clergymen, and so forth - who happen to sit next them at dinner parties? I do not know whether ladies thus indicate their interest in the occupations of their casual neighbours at the hospitable board. But if they do not know me, or do not know me well, they generally ask 'Are you writing anything now?' (as if they should ask a painter 'Are you painting anything now?' or a lawyer 'Have you any cases at present?'). Sometimes they are more definite and inquire 'What are you writing now?' as if I must be writing something - which, indeed, is the case, though I dislike being reminded of it. It is an awkward question, because the fair being does not care a bawbee what I am writing; nor would she be much enlightened if I replied 'Madam, I am engaged on a treatise intended to prove that Normal is prior to Conceptional Totemism' - though that answer would be as true in fact as obscure in significance. The best plan seems to be to answer that I have entirely abandoned mere literature, and am contemplating a book on 'The Causes of Early Blight in the Potato,' a melancholy circumstance which threatens to deprive us of our chief esculent root.