The Lilac Fairy Book

First published in 1910, this is a later volume in Andrew Lang's coloured fairy-book series, gathering wonder tales from Celtic, French, Italian, African, and other sources, retold in English for family reading. Typical pieces involve youngest children, enchanted animals, cruel step-relations, and bargains with witches, giants, or underwater beings. The stories are independent; there is no frame narrator. Lang and his collaborators smooth dialect and local ceremony into a uniform style. The book is an anthology of traditional narrative, not an original novel and not a scholarly folklore edition.

Bound in lilac cloth, cover and spine blocked with a colour design. Blue slipcase.