THE RED BOOK OF ANIMAL STORIES. With 65 Illustrations. $2.00.

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS. With 66 Illustrations. $2.00.

THE BOOK OF ROMANCE. With 8 Coloured Plates and 44 other
Illustrations. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75.

THE RED ROMANCE BOOK. With 8 Coloured Plates and many other
Illustrations by H. J. Ford. Net, $1.60. By mail, $1.75.

Longmans, Green, and Co., New York.

[Illustration: THE BLUE PARROT.
[_See p. 16._]

PREFACE

Many years ago my friend and publisher, Mr. Charles Longman, presented
me with _Le Cabinet des Fees_ ('The Fairy Cabinet'). This work almost
requires a swinging bookcase for its accommodation, like the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, and in a revolving bookcase I bestowed the
volumes. Circumstances of an intimately domestic character, 'not
wholly unconnected,' as Mr. Micawber might have said, with the
narrowness of my study (in which it is impossible to 'swing a cat'),
prevent the revolving bookcase from revolving at this moment. I can
see, however, that the Fairy Cabinet contains at least forty volumes,
and I think there are about sixty in all. This great plenitude of
fairy tales from all quarters presents legends of fairies, witches,
genii or Djinn, monsters, dragons, wicked step-mothers, princesses,
pretty or plain, princes lucky or unlucky, giants, dwarfs, and
enchantments. The stories begin with those which children like
best--the old _Blue Beard_, _Puss in Boots_, _Hop o' my Thumb_,
_Little Red Riding Hood_, _The Sleeping Beauty_, and _Toads and
Pearls_. These were first collected, written, and printed at Paris in
1697. The author was Monsieur Charles Perrault, a famous personage in
a great _perruque_, who in his day wrote large volumes now unread. He
never dreamed that he was to be remembered mainly by the shabby little
volume with the tiny headpiece pictures--how unlike the fairy way of
drawing by Mr. Ford, said to be known as 'Over-the-wall Ford' among
authors who play cricket, because of the force with which he swipes!
Perrault picked up the rustic tales which the nurse of his little boy
used to tell, and he told them again in his own courtly, witty way.
They do not seem to have been translated into English until nearly
thirty years later, when they were published in English, with the
French on the opposite page, by a Mr. Pote, a bookseller at Eton.
Probably the younger Eton boys learned as much French as they
condesce