Customer Reviews

The Red Fairy Book (Large Print Edition)

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The 'Red Fairy Book was one of my first fairy tale books I read and I loved it. It's full of imaginative and diffrent fairy tales from all over the world. Such as "The True History of Little Goldenhood " and "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" {my personal favorite}. This book contains thirty-seven tales that will keep you entranced and send you to new lands for days un-end of enjoyment. The numerous and beatiful pen and ink illustrations are done by Henry J. Ford and Lancelot Speed. The 'Red Fairy book' is only one of the numerous books Andrew Lang has put together. Such as the 'Yellow Fairy Book' and the 'Lilac Fairy Book'. Of what I discovered this book is the best one out of them. So if your trying to decide wich one to purchase I reccomend this one!

This book was handed down to my family when I was a very little girl in the early 60s. It was a time of a television explosion of cartoons and children's programming, but my favorite times were when my mom would read from the Red Fairy Book to me and my sisters. The book is comprised of approximately 20 short fairy tales from far northern Europe-Sweden, Germany, and Northern Britain. The stories always had good or evil family members, royalty, and of course monsters. But what lured us little girls to these stories was the style they were told in, wierd and twisted, from lands we knew nothing about. Trying to buy this book last year, all I ran across was a paperback version and it had been revised. Some stories were cut out and a couple new ones were put in. DOES ANYONE KNOW IF THIS VERSION IS THE ORIGINAL???? OURS WAS LOST.

This book is one of my favorites, and by far my favorite fairy tale book. It includes fairy tales from different countries, ones that are hard to find otherwise and are close to their original first telling. It shows that they truly researched and worked hard to come up with something so full of wonderful tales. The way in which they are written adds to the storytelling, and is hard to find anymore.

I originally heard about the Red Fairy Book in the Annotated Hobbit, it was listed as one of J.R.R. Tolkiens influance's.
Anyways I found it and started to read it, and I must say it is the best fairy tale book I own. It's much more lush and interesting than Grimms, though Grimm is great, this book is so far my favorite.
Quite possibly the best fairy tale book ever written.

When I was in third grade, my school had the Red, Blue, and Yellow Faerie books, and as I was an avid reader I read all 3 of them. The one I continued to check-out and reread over and over again however was The Red Fairy Book. I have fond memories of many hours spent turning the pages of this book, and admittedly, it could be that I am looking back thru rose colored spectacles, it made such an impression on me that I am now collecting the whole fairy book series.

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.

Just be sure you get the Dover edition or another one with all the illustrations, table of contents and other good stuff.

As Tolkien's enthusiastic, I read The Red Fairy Book because I wanted to know about Tolkien's early influences.

Andrew Lang's books were the first books that Tolkien ever read, he owned The Red Fairy Book and even after long time he remembered it fondly.

If you are searching for Tolkien in this book you will not be disappointed. You will find there the source for the name of Pippin for instance, you will find in the stories grains of ideas and themes that later found themselves in LOTR.

But you will find there more than just LOTR references. You will find great stories, some of them a little naive for the cynical reader, but all of them interesting. Even if you are adult, this book will conquer you completely. This is a book for all the members of the family. You will love it and your children will love it. Some of the stories are suitable for very small children to read to them before bedtime.

If you are searching for so called "sophisticated" books, this book is not for you. It contained simple stories, some of them with moral and it is lacking complex motives and emotions, after all, it is fairy tales.

All of the fairy books are fantastic. I wasn't allowed to read fairytales as a child, so the majority of the stories are completely new to me, but they are all so creative and mystifying. I enjoy reading them and can't wait to one day read them to my children.

I read these stories to my 5-year-old in lieu of exposing her to the Disney princess line. I love the real-ness of the stories. For the younger set, you have to pick and choose your stories, as the language is much more challenging in some stories than in others. The Red Fairy book doesn't have as many famous stories as the Blue, but it's still a wonderful read.

It can be difficult to find a fairy tale collection that manages to hit on a wider spectrum of stories, rather than the hish-hash collections of everything that everyone has memorized or the collections that go out of the way to find the most unknown and unusual. This has both, from the familiar to the distinctly different, and told in a classic Victorian voice. There is a story for everyone here, romantic, macabre, and even funny, and from a variety of countries and cultures. It's a good, basic show of different types of stories, and each one is memorable! Defintely a must-have for the fairy tale collector!