Fairy Tales

Among the best known adapters of fairylore to literature are these, all of whom (oddly) would probably have thought their own writings to be more likely to last:

Charles Perrault (1628-1703)

A historian now remembered only for his Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, which gave us 'Bluebeard,' 'Little Red Riding Hood,' 'The Sleeping Beauty,' and more.

Badly translated from the French, his 'slipper of fur' in 'Cinderella' became a 'glass slipper.'

His Contes de ma Mere l'oye was the source of our Mother Goose's Tales.

Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785-1863) & Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859)

Famous linguists (Grimm's Law) and founders of comparative myth and folklore now remembered best for Kinder- und Hausmarchen (1812-1822), full of rather frightening fairy tales which may have damaged young psyches for nearly two centuries. Modern witches hate the Brothers Grimm for the bad publicity.

Their fairy tales were translated into English in 1823.

Thomas Crofton Croker (1798-1854)

Antiquary and employee of The Admiralty, was the first writer in English to regard folk tales and fairy tales as literature. His Fairy Legends and Traditions in the South of Ireland (1825-1828) was highly regarded by Sir Walter Scott, another lover of old stories and customs.

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

Arguably the best loved 'gay' writer of all time, is known not only for his poems and satirical sketches or boasting autobiography but for 'The Emperor's New Clothes,' 'The Tinder Box,' 'The Little Mermaid,' and other fairy tales.

His stories were translated into English the year they first appeared in Danish, 1835.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

Historian, anthropologist, classicist, philosopher, journalist, is probably most lovingly recalled for his fairy tale books known by the various colors of their covers: The Yellow Fairy Book, etc.

Other British authors of fairy tales of Lang's time include John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and Rudyard Kipling. These writers are all famous for work other than fairy tales.