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The Lilac Fairy Book

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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.

This particular sample of Lang's collections is another treasure, as always, expanding beyond the more well-known stories (although they are certainly not ignored!) to Arthurian legends and Indian tales. Stories from a variety of countries are included, and randomly put together rather than organized by country. It makes a straight-through reading a blast, like a wild tour around the world. The illustrations, as always, are masterpieces in themselves.

The Andrew Lang collections are well worth it. I read them when I was a child (bless that library) and when I saw them for sale I couldn't resist. The stories have retained their freshness and it is interesting to see similar themes dealt with by different cultures.

These would be great for parents reading to their children or for children looking for something interesting and fun to read.

Definitely worth it!

Among other books, Andrew Lang (1844-1912) wrote twelve books of fairy tales that he differentiated one from the other by color; for example, this one is lilac, another is grey, another is green, another pink, another is blue, and others yellow, and brown. This book contains tales written by others, but which Lang collected. He says he is much like Adam, who Mark Twain said superintended the work in the Garden of Eden, while Eve did the work. Actually, he corrects himself, the tales were originally not written, they preceded writing. They are tales invented by ancient, probably Egyptian grandmothers who told the stories to their grandchildren. The Greek Homer knew the stories and gathered them together and made up his book "Odyssey" out of many of them. Shakespeare also used these stories for his plays. People who invent new fairy tales, he writes, never succeed. The stories in this volume come from Asia, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries. Most of them were collected and translated by Mrs. Lang.

This book was bought with others of the same genre as part of a set that I am collecting. I hope to own all in the series and share the heritage of fairy tales with my grandchildren.

There are a number of collections by this author under various fairy colors. They are all excellent and entertaining althoug after a while they do tend to repeat the same idea although they do not repeat stories, just some regions have the same ethic story told a little differently.