The following fairy tales are taken from Andrew Lang's Colored Fairy books. Lang was born in the Scottish countryside in 1844 and grew up on both local fairy stories and legends, but also those of the brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, Madame d'Aulnoy, and Hans Christian Andersen, to name but a few.

Lang was educated at St. Andrew's and Oxford universities. He wrote poetry, did extensive research into the anthropology of folktales, and translated many of the ancient Greek epic poems. Though he did write some original children's novels, his Colored Fairy books brought him his greatest success.

Many of Lang's contemporaries believed children would no longer be interested in fairy tales when Lang published The Blue Fairy Book in 1899. However, contrary to popular belief, the book was wildly popular, prompting Lang to compile a second book of fairy tales, The Red Fairy Book. Even Lang was surprised by the popularity of the fairy books. In the preface to The Green Fairy Book, he writes, "This is the third, and probably the last, of the Fairy Books of many colours...If we have a book for you next year, it shall not be a fairy book." However, demand from the public was so strong that Lang went on to edit a total of twelve Colored Fairy books.

Please keep in mind that, while I haven't (intentionally) changed the content of these stories, I have occasionally changed the grammar in the stoires. (Sorry, but some of the run-on sentences really bothered me.) So these stories are not exactly printed as Lang's were. And more stories will be added as I have the time to type them into my computer.