The fairy tale is a poetic recording of the facts of life, an interpretation by the imagination of its hard conditions, an effort to reconcile the spirit which loves freedom and goodness and beauty with its harsh, bare and disappointing conditions. It is, in its earliest form, a spontaneous and instinctive endeavor to shape the facts of the world to meet the needs of the imagination, the cravings of the heart. It involves a free, poetic dealing with realities in accordance with the law of mental growth; it is the naïve activity of the young imagination of the race, untrammelled by the necessity of rigid adherence to the fact.

This collection of tales, gathered from the rich literature of the childhood of the world, or from the books of the few modern men who have found the key of that wonderful world, is put forth not only without apology, but with the hope that it may widen the demand for these charming reports of a world in which the truths of our working world are loyally upheld, while its hard facts are quietly but authoritatively dismissed from attention.

The modern child passes through the same stages as did the children of four thousand years ago. He, too, is a poet. He believes that the world about him throbs with life and is peopled with all manner of strange, beautiful, powerful folk, who live just outside the range of his sight; he, too, personifies light and heat and storm and wind and cold as his remote ancestors did. He, too, lives in and through his imagination; and if, in later life, he grows in power and becomes a creative man, his achievements are the fruits of the free and vigorous life of his imagination.

The fairy tale belongs to the child and ought always to be within his reach, not only because it is his special literary form and his nature craves it, but because it is one of the most vital of the textbooks offered to him in the school of life. In ultimate importance it outranks the arithmetic, the grammar, the geography, the manuals of science; for without the aid of the imagination none of these books is really comprehensible.

INTRODUCTION

ONE EYE, TWO EYES, THREE EYES (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)

THE MAGIC MIRROR (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)

THE ENCHANTED STAG (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)

HANSEL AND GRETHEL (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)

THE STORY OF ALADDIN; OR, THE WONDERFUL LAMP (“Arabian Nights’ Entertainments”)

THE HISTORY OF ALI BABA, AND OF THE FORTY ROBBERS KILLED BY ONE SLAVE (“Arabian Nights’ Entertainments”)

THE SECOND VOYAGE OF SINDBAD THE SAILOR (“Arabian Nights’ Entertainments”)

THE WHITE CAT (From the tale by the Comtesse d’Aulnoy)

THE GOLDEN GOOSE (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)

THE TWELVE BROTHERS (Grimm’s Fairy Tales)

THE FAIR ONE WITH THE GOLDEN LOCKS (From the tale by the Comtesse d’Aulnoy)

TOM THUMB (First written in prose in 1621 by Richard Johnson)

BLUE BEARD (From the French tale by Charles Perrault)

CINDERELLA; OR, THE LITTLE GLASS SLIPPER (From the French tale by Charles Perrault)

PUSS IN BOOTS (From the French tale by Charles Perrault)

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY IN THE WOOD (From the French tale by Charles Perrault)

JACK AND THE BEAN-STALK (Said to be an allegory of the Teutonic Al-fader, The tale written in French by Charles Perrault)

JACK THE GIANT KILLER (From the old British legend told by Geoffrey of Monmouth, of Corineus the Trojan)

LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD (From the French tale by Charles Perrault)

THE THREE BEARS (Robert Southey)

THE PRINCESS ON THE PEA (From the tale by Hans Christian Andersen)

THE UGLY DUCKLING (From the tale by Hans Christian Andersen)

THE LIGHT PRINCESS (George MacDonald)

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (From the French tale by Madame Gabrielle de Villeneuve)