Griffins, wizards, dryads and fairies; banished kings, misguided queens and mysterious bee-men: the curious characters who populated Frank Stockton’s fanciful fairy tale worlds once delighted generations of readers on both sides of the Atlantic. When he died in 1902 the New York Times lamented, “It is not easy to imagine any greater loss to American letters.” Yet despite his profound significance for the development of the fairy tale, and his direct influence on American fantasy classics like The Wizard of Oz, Frank Stockton’s trailblazing stories have fallen out of print. Now, readers young and old can once again enjoy his beloved stories in this new edition of his most celebrated collection, The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales, first published in 1887 — complete with a biographical introduction which explains Stockton’s profound importance to the story of fantasy literature.
