Audiobook · read by volunteers
Yellow Fairy Book
Andrew Lang (1844–1912)
Read by Sarah Jennings, Jennifer, Jackie R., Annika Feilbach, Miranda Stinson, Jan Baxter, Laura Caldwell, Jc Guan, Elaine Hamby, Katie Gibboney · 49 chapters · 11 h 23
About the book
A cat and a mouse who set up house together, six brothers turned into swans, a dragon of the north: the Yellow Fairy Book is a treasure chest of tales gathered from many lands. Andrew Lang assembled the fourth of his colourful fairy collections from sources around the world, so that the stories of Europe, Asia and beyond sit side by side. Some are funny, some are eerie, and nearly all have the satisfying shape of a story told by firelight, with clever heroines, foolish kings, helpful animals and magic that comes at a price. Forty-nine short files, read by several LibriVox volunteers, make it easy to enjoy one tale at a time or to settle in for a long evening. Over eleven hours, the collection offers something for children, parents and anyone who still loves a good fairy tale.
Introduction
Andrew Lang (1844-1912) was a Scottish writer, scholar and folklorist who wrote on a remarkable range of subjects, from anthropology and mythology to poetry and history. He is best remembered today for the series of fairy books that began with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889 and continued, each volume named for a different colour, for nearly two decades. The Yellow Fairy Book appeared in 1894 and is the fourth in the sequence.
Lang did not collect the stories from oral tradition himself, and he never claimed to have done so. His achievement was to draw on a vast number of earlier collections, many of them in other languages, and to present the best tales in readable English with the help of a team of translators and retellers. In doing so he gave a number of stories their first appearance in English, and the series became enormously influential in shaping what English-speaking children thought of as the classic fairy tale. The Yellow Fairy Book mixes familiar patterns with surprising, sometimes darker material, and it reaches across cultures to include stories from a wide variety of traditions.
This LibriVox recording is the work of several volunteers, among them Sarah Jennings, Jennifer and Jackie R. It lasts about eleven and a half hours and is divided into forty-nine files, starting with the dedication and preface. Titles such as The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership, The Six Swans and The Dragon of the North show the range on offer. Whether you are sharing the stories with younger listeners or rediscovering them for yourself, they remain an inviting way into the old world of the fairy tale.
Public domain
Andrew Lang died in 1912: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text