I am now an avid Andrew Lang reader! I grew up loving the Red Fairy book, but not being able to fully appreciate it as much as all of the creative efforts that went into writing it. I feel that now that I was able to read this whole book as well as the Violet Fairy Book, I am also eager to read the other famous Fairy Books (all of which, I now own!, except the Rose book).
I believe they are written and compiled more for adults than for anything. But it is really this class, that got me to love fairytales again in a new way, looking for morals and motifs that tied everything together. Fantasy and sci-fi has a whole new meaning for me and I am not ashamed to say, I vow to read everything this man has written! ( )

What is so fascinating to me about fairy tales is the jolts, gaps in space and time, in character and plot, that offer such richness in their mystery and in the opportunity to work out something in my own imagination. In the story 'The Black Thief', the first and second queens of the land are contrasted, predictably, where the first was good and the second bad. But the contrast between the two queens is really only in rank: one queen's sons are heirs, the other queen's son is not, and she begins to plot wicked things. She dies "shattered to pieces" and there is a strange horror in the trap she was in and how she could not be a queen the way such a title was intended.
This is a book best read alone, letting the threes and twelves and cruelties, class markings and cunning subtly mark and haunt one's consciousness.

This had a great selection of fairy tales, mostly collected in Western Europe. Many of the classics, like Rapunzel, Snowdrop (Snow White) and The Rat-Catcher (The Pied Piper), are here, but there were also several English and French fairy tales that I had never heard before. I believe this was the first of Lang's fairy books, and given the wide breadth that followed I think the collection as a whole is a wonderful compilation of world folklore. ( )

Author Andrew Land sis a great job in collecting the origional fairy tales from around the world to publish. The book is a compliation of the stories many people know but not in thier origional form. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Fairy Tales. ( )