Andrew Lang Fairy Books

Andrew Lang's twelve "color" fairy books are some of the most well-known fairy tale anthologies in the world. Lang collected tales from more sources than almost anyone else and many of the stories appear for the first time in English in his collections, translated by his wife and others.

The books were aimed at children, so these aren't the darkest, grittiest versions of the stories. However, as they range in original publication from 1889-1910, expect terms that were used in those times to be present.

I've been reading these books for years and am finally one away from having all twelve. They're not something I pursue actively, having had many of them sitting in my "to read" pile for years. I read the first four quickly, but the fifth is the one I'm still missing, and I got only partway through the next volume I'd picked up before putting them down and not picking them up again until today.

I received the Crimson and Brown books from Paperback Swap today, so I decided to finally get these books read! This is one of the few reviews you'll see on here that happens when I haven't even finished all the books, but I've read enough of these that I can praise the range of tales and the gorgeous illustrations. If you're a fairy tale fan, you should be reading these.

And if you want to read them in order, though you don't have to, the order of publication is: Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Pink, Grey, Violet, Crimson, Brown, Orange, Olive and Lilac.

Lang also wrote many other anthologies, but these are the first ones I'm tackling. Maybe I'll do others eventually, but maybe not.