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.

Many of the books were illu...

All people in the world tell nursery tales to their children, and the stories are apt to be like each other everywhere. A child who has read the Blue and Red and Yellow Fairy Books will find some old friends with new faces in the Pink Fairy Book. Courage, youth, beauty, kindness, have many trials, but they always win the battle; while witches, giants, unfriendly cruel people, are on the losing hand. So it ought to be, and so, on the whole, it is and will be; and that is all the moral of fairy tales. We cannot all be young, alas! and pretty, and strong; but nothing prevents us from being kind, and no kind man, woman, or beast or bird, ever comes to anything but good in these oldest fables ...

Published in 1894, The Yellow Fairy Book is the fourth installment in the series of fairytale collections known as Andrew Lang's “Coloured” Fairy Books and is comprised of stories collected from various foreign language sources including French, German, English, Scottish, Russian, and Polish. Moreover, the tales not only intend to entertain, but also offer an underlying didactic purpose, as many of the stories place an important emphasis on righteous behavior.

Featuring 48 stories, The Yellow Fairy Book includes a number of well-known tales from renowned storytellers Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, which may just ring a bell with titles including...

Andrew Lang’s Brown Fairy Book (1904) was a beautifully produced and illustrated edition of fairy tales that has become a classic. This was one of many other collections of fairy tales, collectively known as Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books.

These are short stories about the life of Ulysses, the stealing of Helen, Paris, battles, Trojan horses, and more!

The Crimson Fairy Book contains thirty-six stories collected from around the world and edited by Andrew Lang. Many tales in this book are translated, or adapted, from those told by mothers and nurses in Hungary; others are familiar to Russian nurseries; the Servians are responsible for some; a rather peculiarly fanciful set of stories are adapted from the Roumanians; others are from the Baltic shores; others from sunny Sicily; a few are from Finland, and Iceland, and Japan, and Tunis, and Portugal. No doubt many children will like to look out these places on the map, and study their mountains, rivers, soil, products, and fiscal policies, in the geography books. The peoples who tell the st...

Andrew Lang’s Olive Fairy Book (1907) was a beautifully produced and illustrated edition of fairy tales that has become a classic. This was one of many other collections of fairy tales, collectively known as Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books.

The tales of King Arthur and his Knights are of Celtic origin. The Celts were the people who occupied Britain at the time when the history of the country opens… It is believed that King Arthur lived in the sixth century, just after the Romans withdrew from Britain… the stories came to be handed down from father to son, in Brittany (whose people are of the same family as the Welsh) as well as in Wales and England… [story-tellers altered the stories to suit their times down through the centuries] …and so in their altered and historically inaccurate form they have reached us at the present day. …Sir Thomas Malory obtained the material for his “Morte d’Arthur,” which was written in 1470....

LibriVox volunteers bring you 16 readings of Romance by Andrew Lang, probably best known as Edward Elgar's song My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land. Interestingly, Lang initially refused permission for his words to be used as lyrics, and Elgar's wife Alice wrote alternative words Afar, amidst the Sunny Isles for the song. However, Lang later relented and gave permission for his poem to be used. The poem was initially published in The Century Magazine, May 1882, and this is the version recorded here. Later collections of Lang's poetry omit the third verse.

This is a selection of the fairy tales (in English) written by Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Karl Grimm in the early 19th Century. These stories are fantastical and although aimed squarely at the flexible mind of a child which can assimilate much stranger concepts than an adult they are quite dark and occasionally brutal. The stakes can be quite high as in Rumpelstiltskin where a terrible bargain is made without due regard to possible future consequences and Tom Thumb who seems forever about to be imprisoned or sliced in two.

These are moral tales and this selection features some of the less ‘grim’ of those tales but they are still a 1000 times more exciting and vivid than ...