Excerpt from Andrew Jackson: The Gentle Savage IF E, unmeasured and unhurried, takes all the time it seems to need for the development of its animate and inanimate tokens Of triumph and travail. Life is a prodigal sower of the seed that laughs at the harvest, and busies itself with hanging out the stars each night and dusting off the sun for the day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the notable exception of Madame d'Aulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories. The Blue Fairy Book assembled a wide range of tales, with seven from the Brothers Grimm, five from Madame d'Aulnoy, three from the Arabian Nights, and four Norse stories, among other sources.
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books constitute a twelve-book series of fairy tale collections. Although Andrew Lang did not collect the stories himself from the oral tradition, the extent of his sources, who had collected them originally (with the notable exception of Madame d'Aulnoy), made them an immensely influential collection, especially as he used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and telling of the actual stories. The Red Fairy Book is the second in the series.
In Greek mythology, Helen, better known as Helen of Sparta or Helen of Troy, was daughter of Zeus and Leda, wife of king Menelaus of Sparta and sister of Castor, Polydeuces and Clytemnestra. Her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. Helen was described as having the face that launched a thousand ships. Helen or Helene is probably derived from the Greek word meaning "torch" or "corposant" or might be related to "selene" meaning "moon".
"The Grey Fairy Book," the sixth in the series, was originally published in 1900. This edition contains all thirty-five of the original stories and all fifty-eight of the original black-and-white illustrations. *** The collections were specifically intended for children, and consequently edited for that end. *** When Andrew began publishing these books there were almost no English fairy tale books in circulation. The series proved of great influence in children's literature, and inspired a host of imitators. The series also proved to be an inspiration to J.R. Tolken and his Middle-Earth collection of novels. *** This book contains these stories: Donkey Skin; The Goblin Pony; An Impossible Enchantment; The Story of Dschemil and Dachemila; Janni and the Draken; The Partnership of the Thief and the Liar; Fortunatus and his Purse...
Each Fairy Book demands a preface from the Editor, and these introductions are inevitably both monotonous and unavailing. A sense of literary honesty compels the Editor to keep repeating that he is the Editor, and not the author of the Fairy Tales, just as a distinguished man of science is only the Editor, not the Author of Nature. Like nature, popular tales are too vast to be the creation of a single modern mind. The Editor's business is to hunt for collections of these stories told by peasant or savage grandmothers in many climes, from New Caledonia to Zululand; from the frozen snows of the Polar regions to Greece, or Spain, or Italy, or far Lochaber. When the tales are found they are adapted to the needs of British children by various hands, the Editor doing little beyond guarding the interests of propriety, and toning down to mild reproofs the tortures inflicted on wicked stepmothers, and other naughty characters.
The Editor thinks that children will readily forgive him for publishing another Fairy Book. We have had the Blue, the Red, the Green, and here is the Yellow. If children are pleased, and they are so kind as to say that they are pleased, the Editor does not care very much for what other people may say.
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books - also known as Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors - are a series of twelve collections of fairy tales, published between 1889 and 1910.