Andrew Lang

The Violet Fairy Book Andrew Lang

Publisher Marketing: The Editor takes this opportunity to repeat what he has often said before, that he is not the author of the stories in the Fairy Books; that he did not invent them 'out of his own head.' He is accustomed to being asked, by ladies, 'Have you written anything else except the Fairy Books?' He is then obliged to explain that he has NOT written the Fairy Books, but, save these, has written almost everything else, except hymns, sermons, and dramatic works. The stories in this Violet Fairy Book, as in all the others of the series, have been translated out of the popular traditional tales in a number of different languages. These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. They are narrated by naked savage women to naked savage children. They have been inherited by our earliest civilised ancestors, who really believed that beasts and trees and stones can talk if they choose, and behave kindly or unkindly. The stories are full of the oldest ideas of ages when science did not exist, and magic took the place of science. Anybody who has the curiosity to read the 'Legendary Australian Tales, ' which Mrs. Langloh Parker has collected from the lips of the Australian savages, will find that these tales are closely akin to our own. Contributor Bio:  Lang, Andrew Andrew Lang (March, 31, 1844 July 20, 1912) was a Scottish writer and literary critic who is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. Lang s academic interests extended beyond the literary and he was a noted contributor to the fields of anthropology, folklore, psychical research, history, and classic scholarship, as well as the inspiration for the University of St. Andrew s Andrew Lang Lectures. A prolific author, Lang published more than 100 works during his career, including twelve fairy books, in which he compiled folk and fairy tales from around the world. Lang s Lilac Fairy and Red Fairy books are credited with influencing J. R. R. Tolkien, who commented on the importance of fairy stories in the modern world in his 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture On Fairy-Stories.