The Olive Fairy Book

THE VIOLET FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 54 other Illustrations. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75. THE CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 45 other Illustrations. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75. THE ORANGE FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 50 other Illustrations. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75. THE BROWN FAIRY BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and 42 other Illustrations. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75. THE BLUE POETRY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations. $2.00. THE TRUE STORY BOOK. With 66 Illustrations. $2.00. THE RED TRUE STORY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations. $2.00. THE ANIMAL STORY BOOK. With 67 Illustrations. $2.00. THE RED BOOK OF ANIMAL STORIES. With 65 Illustrations. $2.00. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS. With 66 Illustrations. $2.00. THE BOOK OF ROMANCE. With 8 Coloured Plates and 44 other Illustrations. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75. THE RED ROMANCE BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and many other Illustrations by H. J. Ford. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75. Longmans, Green, and Co., New York. PREFACE Many years ago my friend and publisher, Mr. Charles Longman, presented me with Le Cabinet des Fées (‘The Fairy Cabinet’). This work almost requires a swinging bookcase for its accommodation, like the Encyclopædia Britannica , and in a revolving bookcase I bestowed the volumes. Circumstances of an intimately domestic character, ‘not wholly unconnected,’ as Mr. Micawber might have said, with the narrowness of my study (in which it is impossible to ‘swing a cat’), prevent the revolving bookcase from revolving at this moment. I can see, however, that the Fairy Cabinet contains at least forty volumes, and I think there are about sixty in all. This great plenitude of fairy tales from all quarters presents legends of fairies, witches, genii or Djinn, monsters, dragons, wicked step-mothers, princesses, pretty or plain, princes lucky or unlucky, giants, dwarfs, and enchantments. The stories begin with those which children like best—the old Blue Beard , Puss in Boots , Hop o’ my Thumb , Little Red Riding Hood , The Sleeping Beauty , and Toads and Pearls . These were first collected, written, and printed at Paris in 1697. The author was Monsieur Charles Perrault, a famous personage in a great perruque , who in his day wrote large volumes now unread. He never dreamed that he was to be remembered mainly by the shabby little volume with the tiny headpiece pictures—how unlike the fairy way of drawing by Mr.…