Victorian Fairy Tales

Michael Newton has taught at University College London, Princeton University, and Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design, and now works at Leiden University. He is the author of Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children (Faber, 20002), Age of Assassins: A History of Conspiracy and Poltical Violence, 1865-1981 (Faber, 2012), and a book on Kind Hearts and Coronets for the BFI Film Classics series. He has edited Edmund Gosse's Father and Son for Oxford World's Classics, and The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories and Conrad's The Secret Agent for Penguin. He has written and reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement, London Review of Books, the New Statesman, and The Guardian.

A handsome volume containing some spectacularly good fairy stories.

• IntroductionNote on the TextsSelect BibliographyA Chronology of the Victorian Fairy TalePROLOGUEGrimm, 'Rumpel-Stilts-Kin'Hans Christian Andersen, 'The Princess and the Peas'VICTORIAN FAIRY TALESRobert Southey, 'The Story of the Three Bears'John Ruskin, 'The King of the Golden River'William Makepeace Thackeray, 'The Rose and the Ring'George MacDonald, 'The Golden Key'Dinah Mulock Craik, 'The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling Cloak'Mary De Morgan, 'The Wanderings of Arasmon'Juliana Horatia Ewing, 'The First Wife's Wedding Ring'Oscar Wilde, 'The Selfish Giant'Andrew Lang, 'Prince Prigio'Ford Madox Ford, 'The Queen Who Flew'Laurence Housman, 'The Story of the Herons'Kenneth Grahame, 'The Reluctant Dragon'E. Nesbit, 'Melisande'Rudyard Kipling, 'Dymchurch Flit'APPENDIX: What is a Fairy Tale?'John Ruskin, 'Introduction' to  German Popular TalesJuliana Horatia Ewing, 'Preface' to  Old-Fashioned Fairy TalesGeorge MacDonald, 'The Fantastic Imagination'Laurence Housman, 'Introduction' to  Gammer Grethel's Fairy TalesExplanatory Notes