The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lilac Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang

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Title: The Lilac Fairy Book

Author: Andrew Lang

Posting Date: February 9, 2009 [EBook #3454]
Release Date: October, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LILAC FAIRY BOOK ***

Produced by J.C. Byers, and L.M. Shaffer

THE LILAC FAIRY BOOK

Edited by Andrew Lang

Preface

'What cases are you engaged in at present?' 'Are you stopping many teeth
just now?' 'What people have you converted lately?' Do ladies put these
questions to the men--lawyers, dentists, clergymen, and so forth--who
happen to sit next them at dinner parties?

I do not know whether ladies thus indicate their interest in the
occupations of their casual neighbours at the hospitable board. But if
they do not know me, or do not know me well, they generally ask 'Are
you writing anything now?' (as if they should ask a painter 'Are you
painting anything now?' or a lawyer 'Have you any cases at present?').
Sometimes they are more definite and inquire 'What are you writing now?'
as if I must be writing something--which, indeed, is the case, though
I dislike being reminded of it. It is an awkward question, because the
fair being does not care a bawbee what I am writing; nor would she
be much enlightened if I replied 'Madam, I am engaged on a treatise
intended to prove that Normal is prior to Conceptional Totemism'--though
that answer would be as true in fact as obscure in significance. The
best plan seems to be to answer that I have entirely abandoned mere
literature, and am contemplating a book on 'The Causes of Early Blight
in the Potato,' a melancholy circumstance which threatens to deprive us
of our chief esculent root. The inquirer would never be undeceived.
One nymph who, like the rest, could not keep off the horrid topic of my
occupation, said 'You never write anything but fairy books, do you?' A
French gentleman, too, an educationist and expert in portraits of Queen
Mary, once sent me a newspaper article in which he had written that I
was exclusively devoted to the composition of fairy books, and nothing
else. He then came to England, visi