PREFACE. PREFACE is usually an excrescence on a good book, and a vain apology for a worthless one; but in the present instance a few explanatory words seem necessary. This is meant to be the best collection attainable of that delight of all children, and of many grown people who retain the child-heart still-the oldfashioned, time-honoured classic Fairy-tale. It has been compiled from all sources-far-off and familiar; when familiar, the stories have been traced with care to their original form, which, if foreign, has been re-translated, condensed, and in any other needful way made suitable for modern British children. Perrault, Madame d'Aulnois, and Grimm have thus been laid under contribution. Where it was not possible to get at the original of a tale, its various versions have been collated, compared, and combined; and in some instances, where this still proved unsatisfactory, the whole story has been written afresh. The few real old English fairy tales, such as Jack the Giant Killer, Tom Thumb, &c. whose authorship is lost in obscurity, but whose charming Saxon simplicity of style, and intense realism of narration. make for them an ever green immortality-these have been left intact; for no later touch would improve them. All modern stories have been excluded. Of course, in fairy tales instruction is not expected— we find there only the rude moral of virtue rewarded and vice punished. But children will soon discover for themselves that in real life all beautiful people are not good, nor all ugly ones wicked; that every elder sister is not ungenerous, nor every stepmother cruel. The tender young heart is often reached as soon by the imagination as by the intellect: and without attempting any direct appeal to either reason or conscience, the Editor of this Collection has been especially careful that it should contain nothing which could really harm a child. She therefore trusts that, whatever its defects, this Fairy Book will not deserve a criticism, almost the sharpest that can be given to any work-" that it would have been better if the author had taken more pains." |