'The Prince followed, but could not catch her. Only she dropped one of her glass slippers, which he picked up and treasured' - From Cinderella When Charles Perrault, a civil servant in Paris in the 17th century, heard his son's nurse recounting old French folk stories, he decided to write his own versions, thereby creating a new genre - the literary fairy tale. His legacy includes some of the most enduringly popular fairy tales - 'Cinderella', 'The Sleeping Beauty', 'Blue Beard' - complemented here by the paintings of Edmund Dulac, one of the greatest artists of the Golden Age of book illustration.
Author
Charles Perrault was a French author who laid foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, and whose best known tales, offered as if they were pre-existing folk tales, include: Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Bluebeard, Hop o' My Thumb), Diamonds and Toads, Patient Griselda, The Ridiculous Wishes... Perrault's most famous stories are still in print today and have been made into operas, ballets (e.g., Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty), plays, musicals, and films, both live-action and animation. The Brothers Grimm retold their own versions of some of Perrault's fairy tales.
