Introduction

In this day and age, when one thinks of “fairytales,” their mind darts to Disney storybooks and movies. It’s animated versions of children’s classics is all youth have grown to know and love. Nevertheless, old-school fairytales written by Andrew Lang and other contributing brilliant authors are filled with a richness and complexity that is often missing from Disney. There’s nothing like reading Arabian Nights stories, Norse mythology, or African folk tales to give children an introduction to a particular culture. Especially with stories that are similar to each other, such as “Lon Po Po” and “Red Riding Hood,” which each bear the uniqueness of the narrator’s culture and traditions. Fairy tales excite kids appetites for magic and pave the road for more reading about fantasy worlds. Lang had the ambition and talent to create another world for children to escape their minds into.

His tales in this volume are intended for children, who will like, it is hoped, the old stories that have pleased so many generations. Lang was influenced to collect the tales because he was fascinated by the tales from his homeland, despite collections of fairy tales published in English were rare. At the time, his tasks weren’t readily accepted by society, as they viewed fairy tales as brutal and harmful to children. Contrary to belief, fairytales aren’t harmful to children, they are helpful in an abundant of ways. As Albert Einstein once said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales.” Lang was fighting the conservatives of the day who criticized his works until they became wildly successful. The popularity of the collections completely changed this perception.

Fairytales provide several valuable life lessons with a bit of amusement to sweeten the message. The tales are still the first shared experience most of the world has of story-telling. Many fairy tales offer a sense of hope, hope of redemption, hope that good can conquer evil, hope that our enemies will be vanquished. They expand our idea of what’s possible in this world. The stories add imaginative figures such as fairies, magicians, giants, and trolls to our ordinary world, pushing our fantasies to soar with notions of “what if?” and “if this was real, what would happen?” Whereas we all know these stories aren’t really true, we still like to believe they are. The world will continue to read and pass them on as they will continue to evolve. We live these days in strange, dark times when we need to remember our common attributes not our differences.

Not to mention, Andrew Lang’s aptness in the creation of fairy tales, he had many other skills, unaware by most. He was a novelist, literary critic, poet and anthropologist. The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession, he is best recognized for the works he did not write.