Customer Reviews

The Crimson Fairy Book (Dover Children's Classics)

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Andrew Lang was one of the first editors to collect multicultural fairy tales into one volume for readers. The Crimson Fairy Book offers tales from many lands. Included tales are How to find out a True Friend, The Language of Beasts, The Ambitious Tailor, Clever Maria, The Colony of Cats, How the Beggar Boy turned into Count Piro, and many others. The Blue Fairy Book is still the most popular with the best known tales, but look here for lesser known tales.

The Crimson Fairy book is just another superb fairy tale book edited by Andrew Lang. Unlike most of the Fairy books edited by Lang this one has color illustrations as well as black and white. This book contains 45 black and white, and 8 color illustrations. Along with the illustrations are the stories, ranging in length from a couple pages to almost twenty. There are 36 stories including: The Story of the Seven Simons, The Boy Who Could Keep a Secret, Tiidu the Piper,Paperarello, The Cottager and his Cat, Eisenkopf, The Three Robes, Shepherd Paul, The Magic Kettle, and more.

I'd heard a lot about this series, but I wasn't sure if the language would be too antiquated for my kids, so I downloaded a few of them at google, fell madly in love, and bought some...I won't be happy till I've got the whole series in my collection, because each one of the "color fairy" books is more fabulous than the one before it!

Really, if you love traditional fairy tales and fables, you'll love these. By the way, did you know that "SNOW WHITE" had a name change? She was originally called "SnowDrop". Theres all sorts of lovely details like that in these books, and I love being able to tell my children some of the original charming details of stories that they know and love. We don't have much in the way of "oral traditions" in our society, but these are a step in the right direction. Originally, these were all collected from oral fables from all over the world, and like "brothers Grimm", Lang introduced America to some now beloved stories for the first time.

And the illustrations by H.J. Ford (his "Thumbelina" drawings are some of my alltime fave illustrations!) are GORGEOUS ink w ornate victorian styling. Really bring the stories to life with princesses and fairy coaches pulled by doves, funny ogres and bewitched royals hexed into all manner of beasts. Really worth it, and the whole series of "Color Fairy" books are a fantastic addition to library of kidlets and adults with a whimsical side...and a MUST for any artist!

Don't miss out on adding these to your library. If you've only ever seen modern versions of these tales, you're really missing out! Plus, there are many stories here that I'd never heard before...they're all but lost to history. Check out the pdf forms at google if you'd like to see some more illustrations, or even read some text. I actually got sucked into the stories and read the whole thing, but then I had to go buy them, because there's just no substitute to having a bound book that you can curl up with at storytime and share with your children again and again.

This Andrew Lang fairy tales came recommended by a prominent writer, at a recent workshop.

In a series of fairy tales first published in 1890, Andrew Lang, as editor, reveals fairy tales from around the world. Some of these seem familiar, and are not the politically correct stories you might read elsewhere.

Instead, they offer metaphors where the hero and heroine might undergo tremendous ordeals, yet somehow, their character find the resilience, and resources for ultimate success.

As such you might find these stories very useful, if telling them to a child. You may also find them useful to you as an adult. I certainly enjoy them.

If you boogle online, you can read and print some of these stories at a myth folklore site. This also lists complete contents of the various books to help you with your choice.

If you are confused about which book to buy first, the most familiar stories are in the blue book.

In the Crimson, I enjoyed the various stories I have read so far, such as: Ilonka, Lucky Luck, and Gifts of the Magician.

If you're like me, the difficulty you may encounter is not with the book, but with the publisher. I highly recommend the books on AMAZON by Boomer Books. These have slightly larger print, which I am more comfortable reading, as I wear bifocals. You can add the word boomer to your search.

The blue book I purchased is slightly smaller print which I find more difficult to read.

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 is the most famous and best compiler of fairy tales from around the world in English. His whole color series is worth every penny. This volume contains many largely unknown stories for a nice change of pace from the old stand bys. There are 43 black and white pen and ink illustrations by the famous illustrator H. J. Ford. The pictures make the stories truly come alive. Dover's copies of colored pictures are not great, but they do very well with black and white pictures. Start the series with the Blue Fairy Book and keep reading. These books were treasures from my childhood; I used to just thumb through the pictures and daydream. Happy reading and looking!

Start with the Yellow fairy book and work your way through. Good for ages 12 and up.

What I loved most about this book was the variety of the tales told. Lang's outreach was impressive in what he scooped together for this--once again the more "little-known" tales of the universe in a broad aray of stories arranged from the more traditional type to those that are clearly fables and even a few that I would consider highly original and fantastical. Lang also hits a global impact here as these stories bounce throughout the countries.

The stories are lovely as well as the pictures. An excellent addition to any collection.

Some of these stories are bizarre and I wonder how much they have strayed from the original story told by oral tradition. They are nice and short and perfect for bedtime stories when you don't want to commit to a long book. Seriously though, be prepared for some off-the-wall material.