The Complete Fairy Tales (Oxford World's Classics)

A nice and unique collection of works from this French author/collector.

Love it!

I really liked this book and it gave a lot of details.I also read stories that I never have heard of

The translation was very good and flowed nicely, BUT the font type was WAY too small in my opinion. That was my only gripe.

See title.

Just as described in the synopsis. Illustrations are wonderful. This is a keeper for my fairy tale collection.

Once upon a time, Oxford was a fine publisher and knew how to make a book such as this a thing of charm and durability.Then the Americans stepped in, and nothing has every been the same.The text here--that is, the translation, both prose and verse--IS charming indeed, but the binding and format are distinctly unlovely. A red ribbon serves to mark the place where sleep overcame one, but the signatures are glue-bound, not sewn, so the book doesn't like to lie open in your lap, and the title gilding is brash and loud, where it should barely whisper of treasures inside.

:)

It is almost 400 years since Perrault's birth, and if that seems a long time, it is!So it is hugely is completely remarkable that so many tales in his collection are established in our psyche. Here, in one volume, we find "Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding-Hood," "Bluebeard," "Puss in Boots," and "Cinderella." Surely, through their presence in the nurseries of Europe and across the generations, these stories have had as much influence on how we view the world as those of other more celebrated authors like Shakespeare.Of course, it is not completely clear whether Perrault created all of these tales or 'merely' rendered them into a literary form and so made them available to us so many years later. Nevertheless, it seems certain that Perrault added to and polished his stories, working and re-working the texts between published editions and so improving the narratives making them more substantial and more memorable.This edition is enhanced by a collection of illustrations by Gustave Doré. Rather sadly, the book takes no more than one brief paragraph to comment about this artist who was born almost two hundred years after the author. His woodcut-effect pictures go a long way to capture the tone of the tales and little details (like the heaped plate of babies at the Ogre's banquet table in Puss in Boots) add a further dimension to the reader's perception.On the other hand, illustrations (just like the Disney and Pixar films) tend to cement fairy tales in a particular mythical past. Although the originals were also written in the past tense, they were intended to apply to the here and now of the audience's imagination. For today's reader, the stories lack immediacy and urgency: they require a creative leap into a past of castles and kings. Not, of course, that this is a bad thing for extending how we (and especially children) toy with new ideas and develop their play and thoughts, but there is a risk that the result is a belief that the core message of the old tales does not apply to us because the world has moved on.In his translation, Christopher Betts has drawn on previous work and done a fine job tackling the verse: by far from an easy task! A little more editorial care would have been welcome, however. It is a shame to stumble over small details, but (for example) in The Fairies, while the translator adds a good note about why the title is in the plural when the story contains only one fairy, he fails to update the text so that the fairy's gift "at every word you speak, from your mouth a flower will come, or else a precious stone" mysteriously only yields "two roses, two pearls, and two great diamonds" when the girl says "I beg your pardon, mother, for having taken so long." Has the fairy short-changed the poor girl?Whatever the details, these stories should be required reading for all fairy tale enthusiasts. They lay the foundation for literary fairy stories as we know them.

I love this book. The illustrations and mostly the life learning stories! This is one of the best classic stories to teach kids right from wrong!

Beautiful edition with the illustrations by Gustave Dore and a good introduction. A good way to re-read classic fairy tales.

Great tales probably not suitable for today's wimpy children as they're not soft and fluffy with happy endings. The illustrations are superb and disturbing and fit the stories very well. Not the highest quality book but i wasn't expecting it to be at the price but I still recommend it highly

This is a very neat paperback edition of Perrault's Fairy Tales, with illustrations by Gustave Dore.