The Lilac Fairy Book

Andrew Lang

Jan 1910 · Longmans, Green, and Company

About this ebook

Andrew Lang's Fairy Books consists of a series of twelve collections of fairy tales published between 1889 and 1910. Although Lang did not collect the stories from oral tradition himself, the extent of his research makes them an immensely influential collection. Lang used foreign-language sources, giving many of these tales their first appearance in English. "The Lilac Fairy Book" is the last in this handsome series. Thus, whether your favorite is the Swahili tale "The One-Handed Girl," or "The Story of a Very Bad Boy," you sometimes have to save the best for last!

About the author

Andrew Lang. Was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.Lang was born in Selkirk. He was the eldest of the eight children born to John Lang, the town clerk of Selkirk, and his wife Jane Plenderleath Sellar, who was the daughter of Patrick Sellar, factor to the first duke of Sutherland. On 17 April 1875, he married Leonora Blanche Alleyne, youngest daughter of C. T. Alleyne of Clifton and Barbados. She was (or should have been) variously credited as author, collaborator, or translator of Lang's Color/Rainbow Fairy Books which he edited.He was educated at Selkirk Grammar School, Loretto, and at the Edinburgh Academy, St Andrews University and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first class in the final classical schools in 1868, becoming a fellow and subsequently honorary fellow of Merton College. He soon made a reputation as one of the most able and versatile writers of the day as a journalist, poet, critic, and historian. In 1906, he was elected FBA.He died of angina pectoris at the Tor-na-Coille Hotel in Banchory, Banchory, survived by his wife. He was buried in the cathedral precincts at St Andrews