A wonderful collection of fairy stories selected by Andrew Lang at the end of the 19th century and fully illustrated by Charles van Sandwyk for this Folio edition.
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The Blue Fairy Book – so popular in its day that it went on to launch an entire series (the Rainbow Fairy Books) – has all the ingredients one would expect to find in a collection of fairy tales: the bewitched and the beautiful, the fearful and the brave. The good are as true-hearted as they are fair, and as heroic as they are handsome, but not everyone lives happily ever after, and even the prettiest of princesses cannot be happy if she forgets to keep her word.
Production Details
Bound in blocked cloth
Set in Founder’s Caslon
400 pages
Frontispiece and 14 colour illustrations, two-colour decorative title page, 2 full-page black & white integrated illustrations and numerous black & white tail pieces
Printed endpapers
Coloured tops
Plain slipcase
10˝ x 7½˝
The greatest collections in the English language
Between 1889 and 1910, Andrew Lang oversaw the translation and editing of hundreds of fairy tales from around the world. Today his Rainbow Fairy Books are widely regarded as the greatest collections to be published in the English language. And The Blue Fairy Book started it all.
The stories in the Rainbow Fairy Books were collected by Andrew Lang at the end of the 19th century, a gathering of many of the best-loved tales from his childhood – ‘old stories’, Lang calls them in his preface, ‘that have pleased so many generations’. They include the best of the English tradition, favourites from the Brothers Grimm, Perrault, The Arabian Nights and Gulliver’s Travels, as well as lesser-known tales and new re-tellings such as Lang’s own ‘The Terrible Head’, which is based on the Greek myth of Perseus and the Gorgon. Reared on Scottish border ballads told by his old nurse, Lang was reading by the age of four and devoured ‘every fairy-tale I could lay my hands on’. He was enthralled by trolls and witches, by stories of changelings and devilish hunts. Later the tales of Shakespeare, Homer and Dickens were to fire his imagination, along with his friendships with Kipling, J. M. Barrie, E. Nesbit and Conan Doyle. And thus, ‘almost by accident’, Lang produced The Blue Fairy Book, with the help of his wife, Leonora.
A handsome edition
The original Rainbow Fairy Books were illustrated by Henry J. Ford, mostly in black and white, but for the Folio edition we turned to prolific artist and illustrator Charles van Sandwyk. His How To See Fairies was published by Folio in 2018 and the first printing sold out in a matter of weeks. His charming, full-colour illustrations adorn the pages of Lang’s tales, alongside exquisite black-and-white chapter headers and tailpieces that complement the delicate gold-blocked binding artwork, also hand-drawn by Van Sandwyk. This edition is completed with an introduction to Lang’s life and works by Joan Aiken, beloved author of many historical and fantastical books for children and adults.
Classic Stories in this Collection
The Bronze Ring Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess East of the Sun and West of the Moon The Yellow Dwarf Little Red Riding-Hood The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood Cinderella; or, the Little Glass Slipper Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp The Tale of a Youth who Set out to Learn what Fear Was Rumpelstiltzkin Beauty and the Beast The Master-Maid Why the Sea is Salt The Master Cat; or, Puss in Boots Felicia and the Pot of Pinks The White Cat The Water-Lily. The Gold-Spinners The Terrible Head
The Story of Pretty Goldilocks The History of Whittington The Wonderful Sheep Little Thumb The Forty Thieves Hansel and Grettel Snow-White and Rose-Red The Goose-Girl Toads and Diamonds Prince Darling Blue Beard Trusty John The Brave Little Tailor A Voyage to Lilliput The Princess on the Glass Hill The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou The History of Jack the Giant-Killer The Black Bull of Norroway The Red Etin
About Charles van Sandwyk
Charles van Sandwyk was born in South Africa and raised in Canada; he taught himself calligraphy and intaglio printing as a teenager. His first self-published book appeared when he was just 20, and won a national award. Since then his work has been archived by the National Library of Canada and treasured by private collectors across the world. Van Sandwyk has produced illustrations for the Folio editions of The Blue Fairy Book, The Wind in the Willows and How to See Fairies (which he both wrote and illustrated). A limited edition of Alice inWonderland, illustrated by Charles van Sandwyk, was published by The Folio Society to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first edition. It sold out rapidly.
About Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken, daughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken, was born in 1924 in Sussex, England. Educated privately, Aiken worked as a librarian for the UN Information Centre from 1943 to 1949, and then as a features editor for Argosy magazine from 1955 to 1960. In 1953 she published her first collection of short stories for children, All You’ve Ever Wanted, and went on to write more than 60 books for children and adults. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, published by The Folio Society in 2015 and the first book in her James III series, established her reputation as a writer of fast-paced and humorous adventure stories. In 1968 she was awarded the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize and named commended runner-up for the Carnegie Medal for The Whispering Mountain, a prequel to the James III series. In 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her services to children’s literature. Aiken died in 2004.
Reviews Powered By
Average Score for 63 Review(s)
Sandwyck is a treasure
Review by
MR ELDON WHALEN
on 16th April 2022
Gorgeous!!! Always a Folio customer.
Review by
Samantha Hathaway
on 13th April 2022
I bought this for my wife. She is in love. So many wonderful stories and beautiful pictures.
Review by
Ryan B.
on 4th March 2022
What a gorgeous collector’s edition filled with wonderful stories and beautiful illustrations! So lovely! My daughter is just a toddler now, but I hope she will cherish it and keep it forever then continue to pass it down to the next generation. :)
A lively collection of nursery rhymes, both familiar and little known, collected by Andrew Lang, the acclaimed folklorist and editor of the Rainbow Fairy Books.
An exclusive new Folio edition, Letters from Fairyland features exquisite miniature envelopes filled with heartfelt letters from Fairyland, and is lavishly illustrated with Charles van Sandwyk’s enchanting illustrations.
This Folio edition, a facsimile of the British edition of 1909, contains 60 of The Brothers Grimm’s most famous tales, including ‘Snow White’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘Red Riding Hood’.
