Andrew Lang's Violet Fairy Book (1901)

35 old and forgotten folk tales and fairy tales collected from around the world

The stories in this Violet Fairy Book, as in all the others of the series, have been translated out of the popular traditional tales in a number of different languages. These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. They were inherited by our earliest civilised ancestors, who really believed that beasts and trees and stones can talk if they choose. The stories are full of the oldest ideas of ages when science did not exist, and magic took the place of science. Anybody who has the curiosity to read the 'Australian Legendary Tales,' (ISBN 978-1-907256-41-7) which Mrs. Langloh Parker has collected from the lips of the Australian Aborigines, now known as the Australian Jungle Book, will find that these tales are closely akin to our own. Who were the first authors of these tales? Nobody knows—probably the first men and women.

In all these 35 stories have been drawn from Serbia, East Africa, Japan, Lithuania, Russia, Romania, Scandinavia, Italy, Germany and Portugal which gives the reader interesting variation in themes from different cultures.

Raising Funds for a Worthy Cause

Given the opportunity, Andrew Lang often stated, that he is not the author of the stories in the Fairy Books; that he did not invent them 'out of his own head.' He was accustomed to being asked, by ladies, 'Have you written anything else except the Fairy Books?' He felt obliged to explain that he has NOT written the Fairy Books, but, save these, has written almost everything else, except hymns, sermons, and dramatic works.

Of the 35 stories in this book, Miss Blackley translated 'Dwarf Long Nose,' 'The Wonderful Beggars,' 'The Lute Player,' 'Two in a Sack,' and 'The Fish that swam in the Air.' Mr. W. A. Craigie translated from the Scandinavian, 'Jasper who herded the Hares.' Mrs. Lang did the rest. Some of the most interesting are from the Roumanian, and three were previously published in the late Dr. Steere's 'Swahili Tales.' By the permission of his representatives these three African stories have here been abridged and simplified for children.

33% of the publisher’s profit from the sale of this book will be donated to the Temi Charitable Trust in the viallage of Gremi in the province of Kakheti in the Republic of Georgia. ‘Temi’ means ‘community’ in Kartuli, the Georgian language.