The Grey Fairy Book (Fairy Book #6)

A beautiful young woman disguises herself in a filthy donkey skin and wins the love of a prince; a Fairy Queen rides in a chariot drawn by six splendid ostriches; a poor young man meets Dame Fortune in a wood and is given the gift of a magic purse. The stories in The Grey Fairy Book originate in France, Germany, Greece, Lithuania and various parts of Africa, yet they share the universal magic of all fairy tales. As Lang writes in his preface, ‘A certain number of incidents are shaken into many varying combinations, like the fragments of coloured glass in the kaleidoscope.’
Lauren Nassef has created thirteen full-page colour plates, an illustrated frontispiece and ten large tailpieces, as well as a beautiful endpaper design inspired by the tale of Princess Mutinosa in ‘An Impossible Enchantment’. There is also a beautifully written introduction by Kate Bernheimer, fairy-tale writer, scholar and editor. In it, she describes her first encounters with Andrew Lang’s fairy books, culminating in a long-overdue library copy, and praises the way in which fairy tales ‘can liberate writers and readers’.

Classic stories included in this collection: 'Donkey Skin'; 'The Goblin Pony'; 'An Impossible Enchantment'; 'The Story of Dschemil and Dschemila'; 'Janni and the Draken'; 'The Partnership of the Thief and the Liar'; 'Fortunatus and his Purse'; 'The Goat-faced Girl'; 'What came of Picking Flowers'; 'The Story of Bensurdatu'; 'The Magician's Horse'; 'The Little Grey Man'; 'Herr Lazarus and the Draken'; 'The Story of the Queen of the Flowery Isles'; 'Udea and her Seven Brothers'; 'The White Wolf'; 'Mohammed with the Magic Finger'; 'Bobino'; 'The Dog and the Sparrow'; 'The Story of the Three Sons of Hali'; 'The Story of the Fair Circassians'; 'The Jackal and the Spring'; 'The Bear'; 'The Sunchild'; 'The Daughter of Buk Ettemsuch'; 'Laughing Eye and Weeping Eye, or the Limping Fox'; 'The Unlooked-for Prince'; 'The Simpleton'; 'The Street Musicians'; 'The Twin Brothers'; 'Cannetella'; 'The Ogre'; 'A Fairy's Blunder'; 'Long, Broad and Quickeye'; 'Prunella'

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