Fairy Book

Within these pages lie thirty-seven tales that have danced through centuries, carrying the luminous threads of human imagination. These are the original fairy tales, not the polished versions we later learned, but the raw and resonant narratives that first taught us about courage, transformation, and the mysterious ways of the world. Here are the stories you've always known: the glass slipper waiting for its foot, the beanstalk climbing to the sky, the beast learning to love. But also stranger tales await: children lost in forests, frogs who become princes, an invisible prince wandering through enchanted kingdoms, six brothers transformed into swans. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, the Victorian novelist behind "John Halifax, Gentleman," assembled this collection as a portal to the folklore that shaped a culture's dreaming. The magic here is genuine, not sanitized. Danger lives in these woods, but so does wit and cleverness and the stubborn hope that the poor youngest son might indeed win the princess, that the iron stove might indeed speak its secret, that the white cat might hold the key to a kingdom. These are the stories that taught generations how to imagine the impossible.