Andrew Lang 
The Blue Fairy Book 

The Langs’ Fairy Books are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913. The best known books of the series are the 12 collections of fairy tales also known as Andrew Lang’s ‘Coloured’ Fairy Books or Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books of Many Colors. In all, the volumes feature 798 stories, besides the 153 poems in The Blue Poetry Book.

The best-known volumes of the series are the 12 Fairy Books, each of which is distinguished by its own color. The Langs did not collect any fairy tales from oral primary sources, yet only they and Madame d’Aulnoy (1651–1705) have collected tales from such a large variety of sources. These collections have been immensely influential; the Langs gave many of the tales their first appearance in English. Andrew selected the tales for the first four books, while Nora took over the series thereafter. She and other translators did a large portion of the translating and retelling of the actual stories.