Popular Tales

This edition of the stories of Perrault is intended partly as an introduction to the study of Popular Tales in general. The text of the prose has been collated by M. Alfred Bauer with that of the first edition (Paris, 1697), a book which probably ... Read more

This edition of the stories of Perrault is intended partly as an introduction to the study of Popular Tales in general. The text of the prose has been collated by M. Alfred Bauer with that of the first edition (Paris, 1697), a book which probably cannot be found in England. I have to thank M. Bauer for the kind and minute care he has bestowed on his task. We have tried to restore the original text of 1697, with its spelling, punctuation, use of capital letters, and so forth. One might have compared the text of Perrault's prose tales, as published in a book in 1697, with their original form in Moetjens's Recueil or Magazine. Unluckily the British Museum only possesses the earlier volumes of the Recueil, in which the less important stories, those in verse, were first published. The Text of the tales in Verse has been collated, by myself and Mrs. Ogilby, with that of the Recueil. The Paris editions of 1694 and 1695 I have never seen. In his 'Contes en Prose de Charles Perrault' (Jouaust, Paris, 1876), M. Paul Lacroix published the more important readings in which the Recueil differed from the ultimate text. The changes shew good taste on the part of Perrault: one or two tedious gallantries, out of keeping with the stories, were removed by him. Less