Contes Français
1964
Before Disney sanitized them, before they became bedtime staples, these were the tales that invented the fairy tale. Charles Perrault first published these eight stories in 1697, and they retain a chilling, witty edge that modern adaptations have long since smoothed away. Here Cinderella's glass slipper carries darker weight, Blue Beard locks his wives in a forbidden chamber, and Little Red Riding Hood arrives at grandmother's house with her wolf already waiting. The stories pulse with Baroque excess and moral ambiguity, each one ending with a verse moral that winks at the reader's naivety. Gustave Doré's 34 extraordinary engravings, rendered in dense black ink, transform these tales into something operatic and uncanny: forests loom, castles stagger, and supernatural beauty becomes slightly unhinged. This is the version that influenced Grimm, Andersen, and every fairy tale that followed. For readers who thought they knew these stories, Perrault's original French versions will feel like discovering a familiar stranger in the dark.
