The Red Fairy Book: Classic Tales for Children from Dover Publications

Peter: Just out of Brothers Grimm.

United Kingdom on Dec 19, 2023

M.M. Kin: A few familiar stories but a lot of new ones (for me) some were repetitive such as some lad getting magic assistance and saving a princess but all the stories are relatively short.

United States on Aug 23, 2023

Paul Brown: Love it

United States on Jul 17, 2023

Rod Blocksidge: There's little you can say about this series of wonderfully whimsical fairy tales...for adults and children alike...and we need a bit of fantasy in our lives...or are we living it?

United Kingdom on Sep 28, 2020

ACS: racconto di piacevole lettura.

Italy on Aug 28, 2020

Kirsten Lombard: As a young girl, I loved Andrew Lang's fairy books. My mom had the Olive Fairy Book, which she had received as a gift from an old college friend. I spent hours reading the stories it contained, over and over. I sought out other books from the series at my school library and checked them out regularly. The tales are marvelous, the illustrations beautiful, and the imagination they together spur priceless. Andrew Lang and the translators that worked with him have held me in their thrall for all of these years. The influence they've had on my life and imagination has been more than powerful. When I need a bit of inspiration, the Andrew Lang fairy series is one of the first places I go. That Dover has provided these beautiful reproductions is a huge gift to the world, one from which I've long benefited.

United States on Sep 07, 2018

Star of India: A Must Have fairy tale book for the family. Great writing and w the great stories come great illustrations as good as masterpieces for readers to give wings to their imagination. There's three books in the series, the blue, the green and the red. Some criticisms have pointed out that Lang compiled the fairy tales from many sources. I still find him fun and the illustrations are beautiful.
I think it's better to buy them in paper and individually. I got the red book for $10 and it was great. I then bought the set for $75 in used but new condition but they all came in softcover and not the hard cover you would expect for the price. The Red Book sells around $ 45 in hardback edition and w larger illustrations, buy this one if its in the budget and you plan to use it and delight in it over and over.

United States on Dec 28, 2013

Mx Moon Mx. \moon: free access to the legendary lang fairy book searies, no pictures but the tales are still well worth it. One day i hope to collect the first editions but in the meantime having them on my kindle will get me by. Also just to point out that many fairy and folk tales were not intended for children and some of them can be quite dark so i have no issues still reading them at 20. Besides its great inspiration for art.

United Kingdom on Aug 21, 2012

B. Marold: 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...

United States on Aug 29, 2009

CanadianMother: We have both the Blue Fairy Book and the Red Fairy Book, and my 8-year old really enjoys hearing stories from both of these.

The Red Fairy Book, originally published in 1890, is the second of Andrew Lang's series of books, which collect traditional fairy tales from around the world. Most of the tales in this book are European in origin. There are some in here that a reader will recognize (Snowdrop for example, is the story we know usually as Snow White), and many more that are less familiar or even unknown.

It's a very interesting collection. Some of the stories are quite fascinating and even bizarre. There is a lot of entertainment value here, and as I mentioned my daughter really enjoys reading from this book--she asks for this (and the Blue book) often.

However I would like to point out that if these stories are to be read to children, a parent should read the book FIRST and decide which stories would be acceptable. Numerous tales contain a degree of violence which is somewhat shocking to our modern sensibilities. At the time when these stories originated, violence was more a part of life and so these types of details were included in stories. Children, who...

Canada on Oct 08, 2007