Customer Reviews

The Brown Fairy Book (Complete and Unabridged with Original Illustrations)

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It is hard to write reviews for Lang's fairy tale books which are as unique as each collection. The Brown Fairy Book once again has tales from many cultures. Included tales are: How Some Wild Animals Became Tame Ones, Story of the King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, The Mermaid and the Boy, The Sister of the Sun, Which Was The Foolishest?, and many others. I always enjoy the illustrations, too, although some children are disappointed they are black and white drawings.

A Beautifully illustrated collection of fairy tales from different cultures, its refreshing to read tales that aren't just european. When I first bought it I was very disappointed that they weren't the traditional French, German, and English fairy tales but after reading them I found them to be compelling and beautiful. These tales are imaginative, strange, beautiful, wistful, and gorgous. The illustrations are wonderful, they stand in a class of their own. Modern illustrators should use them as inspiration.

For some odd reason, this has to be one of my favorite editions of Andrew Lang's collection. I'm not sure why. But as always, we get a good, varying dose of excellent fairy tales from different countries, bettered by the fact that these tales are little known. So, yep, I recommend this for all collectors and those who just plain love a good fairy tale.

In the late 19th century, historian, scholar, and anthropologist, Andrew Lang, began publishing collections of fairy tales from around the world. The first volume was `The Blue Fairy Book' published in 1887. Lang was not a true ethnologist, like the German Brothers Grimm. He was far more the `translator' than collector of tales from the source, stories transcribed from being told by people to whom the tales were passed down by word of mouth. In fact, many stories in his first volume, such as Rumpelstiltskin; Snow White; Sleeping Beauty; Cinderella; and Hansel and Gretel were translated from Grimm's books of fairy tales. Some of his `fairy tales' were even `copied from relatively recent fantasy fiction, such as A Voyage to Lilliput, the first of the four episodes in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
My inspiration for commenting Lang's series of fairy tale books is for the sheer quantity of tales, the wonderful woodcut illustrations, some few of which may have become almost as popular as the tales (although not quite in the same league as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for Lewis Carroll's great fantasies), and the fact that I had these when I was young.
With twelve of these books, with between 30 and 36 stories in each book, this gives one about 400 different stories. If I were to recommend anything as standard equipment at a grandparents' house, it would be a complete set of these books.
Needless to say, there are a few `warnings' to accompany books assembled over 100 years ago. You will encounter a fair number of words with which even an adult may be unfamiliar, let alone a five year old. For example, on the second page of The Princess Mayblossom in The Red Fairy Book, a character puts sulfur in a witch's porridge. This requires at least three explanations. What is sulfur, what is porridge, and why is sulfur in porridge such a bad thing. More difficult still is when a prince entered the town on a white horse which `pranced and caracoled to the sound of the trumpets'. In 19th century London, caracoling (making half turns to the right and the left) was probably as common and as well known as `stepping on the gas' is today. But, if you're a grandparent, that's half the fun, explaining new words and ideas to the young-uns.
There is another `danger' which may require just a bit more explanation, although in today's world of crime dramas on TV, I'm not sure that most kids are already totally immune to being shocked by death and dead bodies. In these stories, lots of people and creatures get killed in very unpleasant ways, and lots of very good people and creatures suffer in very unpleasant ways. It's ironic that the critics in Lang's own time felt the stories were 'unreality, brutality, and escapism to be harmful for young readers, while holding that such stories were beneath the serious consideration of those of mature age'. The success of a whole library of Walt Disney feature length cartoons based on these stories is a testament to how well they work with children. But do be warned, Uncle Walt did clean things up a bit. Lang's versions hold back on very little that was ugly and unpleasant in some of these stories.
The down side to the great quantity of stories is that even when some come from very different parts of the world, there is a remarkable amount of overlap in theme, plot, and characters. But by the time you get to another story of a beautiful young girl mistreated by a stepmother, it will have been several month since you read Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper in The Blue Fairy Book. The other side of the coin is that you can play the game of trying to recall what that other story was with a similar theme.
There is one very big word of caution about buying these books through Amazon or a similar on line outlet. I stopped counting when I got to twelve different editions of The Blue Fairy Book, or a volume including several of these books. Not all of these editions have the original woodcuts and even worse, not all have a table of contents and introduction. The one publisher which has all twelve volumes is by Dover. Other publishers, such as Flying Chipmunk Publishing (yes, that's it's name) also have all the original illustrations, table of contents, and introduction, but I'm not certain that publisher has all twelve volumes. Dover most certainly does, as I just bought all twelve of them from Amazon.
While I suspect these stories may have been `old hat' for quite some time, it may be that with the popularity of Lord of the Rings, the Narnia stories, and the Harry Potter stories, all of which have their share of suffering and death, that these may be in for a revival. Again, the main attraction is that for relatively little money and space, Grammy and Grandad get a great resource for bonding with children.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) wrote a number of books of fairy tales and differentiated each from the other by color; for example, this one is green, another is pink, another is blue, and others yellow, grey, brown, and lilac. The book contains 32 tales from many lands. He states that many of the tales were told by grandmothers to children who never went to school and who, unfortunately, never will, children in India, Africa, Persia, South America, Australia, and other countries. The stories, he writes, show the advantage of good manners and pleasant behavior. He admits that some stories were revised to omit elements that the "outlandish natives" liked, to make them palatable for "white people." This prejudice was shown in other Lang books.

Although from many foreign lands, the stories contain many of the same ingredients in all fairy tales. What the Rose did to the Cypress? is an example. There is a king who has three very handsome sons. The magic numbers three and seven occur frequently in the tale. One of the sons meets a mysterious man who had seven sons. He tells the prince how each of his sons in turn heard about a very beautiful princess who agreed to marry the man who could answer her riddle, "What the rose did to the cypress?" If the suitor fails to answer the riddle correctly, he is beheaded. Each of his seven sons tried to answer the riddle, failed and was killed. The man said that he has mourned them ever since their deaths.

The prince, as happens in fairy tales, falls in love with the princess, even as the seven sons did, without ever seeing her. He goes to the princess, offers an answer, which is wrong, and is beheaded. When his second brother hears what happened, he also falls in love, with the same result. Then the third brother also falls in love, goes to the princess' palace, but decides not to try to answer until he is sure he knows the real solution.

The rest of the story relates his many adventures during his search. He encounters many beautiful women, including magicians, who fall in love with him because of his beauty. He promises each that he will marry them if they help him. Each offers some help. He comes to a land of demons and fairies. He is changed by magic into a deer. A three hundred year old servant woman tries to catch the deer. Will he be successful? Will he marry any of the beautiful girls who he promised to marry? Will he discover the answer to the riddle? What is the answer? What will he do to the princess? Will he take revenge upon her for murdering his brothers or will he succumb to her beauty and marry her?

I spent all last summer purchasing this series of Fairy Books by Andrew Lang. It was an 18th birthday present for my book-loving daughter. She found a 1960's version at a yard sale, the Blue Fairy Book. She fell in love with the collection of fairy tales from around the world. What a thrill it was when she researched the author and found that there were more books available! She loves the idea of buying secondhand, so I found them through amazon.com all of the 1960's books. I had them delivered to my work address and now all of the different colors line her bookshelf. Violet, Yellow, Brown etc.