The Blue Fairy Book was published by Longmans, Green in 1889 and launched what would become one of the most influential anthological projects in children’s literature. Andrew Lang, a Scottish scholar, poet, and folklorist, compiled thirty-seven stories drawn from French, German, Norse, Scottish, and Arabian sources — including “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” and “The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou.”
The collection was a commercial sensation and its success surprised Lang, who considered himself primarily a classical scholar and anthropologist. His wife Leonora Blanche Lang and a team of female editors did much of the actual translation and adaptation work, though the books bore only Andrew’s name — a fact that modern scholarship has corrected. The stories were retold in a clear, elegant Victorian prose that avoided both condescension and excessive ornamentation.
The Blue Fairy Book established the color-coded series format: each subsequent volume was distinguished by its binding color, and the twelve volumes collectively preserved hundreds of tales from oral traditions around the world at a moment when those traditions were disappearing under the pressure of industrialization and literacy.
Why the Blue Fairy Book Matters
Before Lang, fairy tales were largely the province of scholarly folklorists (the Brothers Grimm) or literary retellers (Perrault). Lang’s innovation was to make comparative folklore available to a popular audience — to present tales from radically different cultures side by side, implicitly demonstrating the universal structures of narrative. This was, in effect, applied anthropology for children, years before Joseph Campbell would theorize the monomyth.
The book also shaped the fairy-tale canon in English. Many of the stories most English-speaking readers think of as “traditional fairy tales” entered popular consciousness through Lang’s versions rather than through earlier translations.
Collecting The Blue Fairy Book
First edition (Longmans, Green, London, 1889): Blue cloth with gilt lettering and decorations. Illustrated by H. J. Ford and G. P. Jacomb Hood.
Market values:
- First edition, fine condition: $2,000–$5,000
- First edition, very good: $800–$2,000
- First edition, good (worn): $300–$800
- Later Longmans printings (1890s): $100–$300
- Dover reprints (1960s onward): $5–$20
The Blue is the most valuable of the series due to its priority and cultural significance. Complete sets of all twelve fairy books in first edition are rare and command $15,000–$40,000 at auction.
People Also Ask
What stories are in The Blue Fairy Book? The collection includes “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Aladdin,” “The Yellow Dwarf,” “Prince Doralice,” “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” and twenty-eight others drawn from French, German, Norse, and Arabian sources.
Did Andrew Lang write the fairy tales? Lang did not write the tales but compiled, selected, and edited them. Much of the translation and adaptation was done by his wife Leonora Blanche Lang and a team of collaborators. The tales are drawn from existing oral and literary traditions.
How many Lang Fairy Books are there? There are twelve volumes in the series, published between 1889 and 1910, each distinguished by a color: Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Pink, Grey, Violet, Crimson, Brown, Orange, Olive, and Lilac.