The Crimson Fairy Book
by Andrew Lang
Every Fairy Book requires a preface from the editor, and these entries are inevitably both monotonous and inconclusive. The Editor's sense of literary honesty continues to repeat that he is the Editor, not the author of Fairy Tales, just as the extraordinary scientist is only the editor, not the author of nature. Like nature, popular fairy tales are too great to be the creation of a single modern mind. It is the editor's job to search for collections of these stories, told by peasant or wild grandmothers in many climates from New Caledonia to Zululand; from the frozen snow of the polar regions to Greece, Spain, Italy or the distant Lochaber. When the tales are tailored to the needs of British children with different hands, the editor does nothing but protect property interests and reduces the torture inflicted on evil stepmothers and other naughty characters to mild accusations.
