Old-Time Stories
1921
These are the originals. Before Disney, before Grimm, there was Perrault: the 17th-century French aristocrat who invented the fairy tale as we know it. Cinderella's glass slipper, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast - these are the first tellings, the ones that launched a thousand retellings. Perrault wrote for the sophisticated salons of Louis XIV's court, so these stories carry a wit and darkness often lost in later sanitizations. The Sleeping Beauty awakens after a century, but in the original version there are children involved. Blue Beard is genuinely terrifying. Little Red Riding Hood doesn't always escape. These are not the wholesome tales you remember - they are sharper, stranger, and more seductive. A century of adaptations has softened Perrault's edges, but here they remain: magical, moral, and utterly unforgettable.
