The Green Fairy Book was published by Longmans, Green in 1892. By the third volume, Lang and his collaborators were reaching well beyond the Western European canon that had dominated the first two books. The Green included stories from Spanish, Chinese, and Moorish traditions alongside French literary fairy tales from Madame d’Aulnoy and tales from Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone. Notable inclusions are “The Three Little Pigs,” “The Story of the Three Bears,” and several Chinese tales.
The expansion of source material reflected Lang’s anthropological conviction that storytelling was a universal human activity, not the property of any single culture. Each successive volume would push further into non-European traditions.
Collecting The Green Fairy Book
First edition (Longmans, Green, London, 1892): Green cloth with gilt decorations. Illustrated by H. J. Ford.
Market values:
- Fine condition: $800–$2,000
- Very good: $300–$800
- Good: $100–$300
Projected values (2026–2036): Strong appreciation. Third in the series, increasingly scarce in good condition.
Beyond Europe
The Green volume (1892) marked a deliberate expansion of the series’ geographical range. Lang reached into Spanish, Chinese, and Moorish sources alongside the familiar French and German material, signalling his conviction that fairy tales were not a European phenomenon but a universal feature of human culture. This anthropological perspective — tales from diverse cultures placed side by side without hierarchy — was radical for the 1890s and remains one of the series’ most valuable qualities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the Lang Fairy Books still in print? Yes. Dover Publications has kept most volumes in print as affordable paperbacks, and several publishers have issued illustrated deluxe editions. The original H. J. Ford illustrations are in the public domain and appear in most modern reprints. Complete sets of the Dover editions are widely available.