Andrew Lang
Tales of known British writer and anthropologist Andrew Lang include
The Blue Fairy Book
(1889).
Andrew Gabriel Lang, a prolific Scotsman of letters, contributed poetry, novels, literary criticism, and collected now best folklore.
The Young Scholar and Journalist
Andrew Gabriel Lang, the son of the town clerk and the eldest of eight children, lived in Selkirk in the Scottish borderlands. The wild and beautiful landscape of childhood greatly affected the youth and inspired a lifelong love of the outdoors and a fascination with local folklore and history. Charles Edward Stuart and Robert I the Bruce surrounded him in the borders, a rich area in history. He later achieved his literary
Short History of Scotland
.
A gifted student and avid reader, Lang went to the prestigious Saint Andrews University, which now holds a lecture series in his honor every few years, and then to Balliol College, Oxford. He later published
Oxford: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes
about the city in 1880.
Moving to London at the age of 31 years in 1875 as an already published poet, he started working as a journalist. His dry sense of humor, style, and huge array of interests made him a popular editor and columnist quickly for The Daily Post, Time magazine and Fortnightly Review. Whilst working in London, he met and married Leonore Blanche Alleyne, his wife.
Interest in myths and folklore continued as he and Leonore traveled through France and Italy to hear local legends, from which came the most famous
The Rainbow Fairy Books
. In the late 19th century, interest in the native stories declined and very few persons recounting them for young readers. In fact, some educationalists attacked harmful magical stories in general to children. To challenge this notion, Lang first began collecting stories for the first of his colored volumes.
Lang gathered already recorded stories, while other folklorists collected stories directly from source. He used his time to collect a much greater breadth over the world from Jacob Grimm, his brother, Madame d'Aulnoy, and other less well sources.
Lang also worked as the editor, often credited as its sole creator for his work despite the essential support of his wife, who transcribed and organised the translation of the text, to the success.
He published to wide acclaim. The beautiful illustrations and magic captivated the minds of children and adults alike. The success first allowed Lang and Leonore to carry on their research and in 1890 to publish a much larger print run of
The Red Fairy Book
, which drew on even more sources. Between 1889 and 1910, they published twelve collections, which, each with a different colored binding, collected, edited and translated a total of 437 stories. Lang, credited with reviving interest in folklore, more importantly revolutionized the Victorian view and inspired generations of parents to begin reading them to children once more.
Last Works
Lang produced and at the same time continued a wide assortment of novels, literary criticism, articles, and poetry. As Anita Silvey, literary critic, however, noted, "The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession... he is best recognized for the works he did not write," the folk stories that he collected.
He finished not the last
Highways and Byways of the Border
but died.
“Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?”
“...she has been bewitched by a wicked sorceress, and will not regain her beauty until she is my wife.''Does she say so? Well if you believe that you may drink cold water and think it bacon'.”
“It is so delightful to teach those one loves!”
“...remember that the danger that is most to be feared is never the danger we are most afraid of.”
“Why should I laugh?' asked the old man. 'Madness in youth is true wisdom. Go, young man, follow your dream, and if you do not find the happiness that you seek, at any rate you will have had the happiness of seeking it.”
“I fear nothing when I am doing right,' said Jack.'Then,' said the lady in the red cap, 'you are one of those who slay giants.”
“Letters from the first were planned to guide us into Fairy Land.”
“And he married the Echo one fortunate morn,And Woman, their beautiful daughter, was born!The daughter of Sunshine and Echo she cameWith a voice like a song, with a face like a flame;With a face like a flame, and a voice like a song,And happy was Man, but it was not for long!For weather's a painfully changeable thing,Not always the child of the Echo would sing;And the face of the Sun may be hidden with mist,And his child can be terribly cross if she list.And unfortunate man had to learn with surpriseThat a frown's not peculiar to masculine eyes;That the sweetest of voices can scold and sneer,And cannot be answered - like men - with a spear”
“Madame d'Aulnoy is the true mother of the modern fairy tale. She invented the modern Court of Fairyland, with its manners, its fairies, its queens, its amorous, its cruel, its good, its evil, its odious, its friendly fées.”
“In the old stories, despite the impossibility of the incidents, the interest is always real and human. The princes and princesses fall in love and marry--nothing could be more human than that. Their lives and loves are crossed by human sorrows...The hero and heroine are persecuted or separated by cruel stepmothers or enchanters; they have wanderings and sorrows to suffer; they have adventures to achieve and difficulties to overcome; they must display courage, loyalty and address, courtesy, gentleness and gratitude. Thus they are living in a real human world, though it wears a mythical face, though there are giants and lions in the way. The old fairy tales which a silly sort of people disparage as too wicked and ferocious for the nursery, are really 'full of matter,' and unobtrusively teach the true lessons of our wayfaring in a world of perplexities and obstructions.”
“Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who really care for books read all of them. There is no other course.”
“O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.”
“You can cover a great deal of country in books. ”
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.”