Fairy Tales

AULNOY, Countess d' (Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy). Fairy Tales. Translated by James Robinson (J. R.) Planché. With twelve litographs, including one frontispiece reproducing a rare full-length portrait of d'Aulnoy, by John Gilbert. 

London: George Routledge and Sons, 1855. First precise, unadapted and faithful English translation of Madame d'Aulnoy's Fairy Tales, collecting twenty-two of the twenty-four fairy tales, together with a Preface, Introduction (this volume unfortunately being bound without the 7 pages of Introduction), and an Appendix to rear.

18.2 x 12.3 cm; xiii, 619 pp. (including Appendix). Contemporary half-calf with marbled paper sides, four raised bands and black leather label with gilt titles to spine, decorated in gilt and blind-embossed.  Externally very rubbed to both extremities and boards, new endpapers, hinges completely broken but the binding holds well together with pages firmly bound. Many of the pages (including the first three) have small turning (closed) tears to outer edges (not impacting legibility), a few marks and some foxing to a handful of pages, one plate frayed to edges with a few small losses (not from the litograph itself), a few innocuous tidemarks throughout, some small ear marks or creases.  As noted above, this copy was bound without the introduction in which Planche sets out his concept of the literary history of fairy tales and d’Aulnoy’s place within it. We have, however, printed the missing pages and loosely inserted them into the volume, simply for reference.

Still a lovely copy of this very, very scarce edition of d'Aulnoy's fairy tales, the first that attempted to faithfully translate the fairy tales without altering them, nor ascribing other writers' works to her, and keeping the tales as intended, i.e. meant to be read by adults.  Planche was a keen admirer of Madame d'Aulnoy and this is a notable translation of her works. He was often seen to be "diligently turning over the leaves of her works" and was variously characterised by anonymous reviewers as "a sort of student ... working for fairy honours," as a miner of her stories (with d'Aulnoy as his "California"), as her "old friend," and as her bold cavalier. (Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2009)

John Gilbert's twelve litographs help frame the tales wonderfully (although this is not what Planche thought, who was of the opinion that John Gilbert's illustrations were of the Romantic approach, and would have preferred a more humorous interpretation of d'Aulnoy's eccentric situations by the likes of Alfred Forrester). The full-length portrait of d'Aulnoy which was the only one selected and chose by Planche himself as the volume's frontispiece was praised by Charles Dickens as evocative of a lively storyteller: "she looks like a woman who could tell her stories viva voce, as well as write them" (letter of May 3, 1855, qtd. in Recollections 2, by Planche).

Madame d’Aulnoy is too often and unjustly overlooked in the history of fairy tales. Yet in her own time she was immensely popular and stands as a pioneering figure in the genre - indeed, France’s foremost fairy-tale author prior to her death in 1705. She coined the very term contes de fées (“fairy tales”) and introduced literature’s first “Prince Charmant,” or Prince Charming. In his introduction to the 2019 two-volume collection of her tales, literary scholar and fairy-tale specialist Jack Zipes observes that D’Aulnoy’s stories “placed women in greater control of their destinies than in fairytales by men. It is obvious that the narrative strategies of her tales, like those she told or learned in the salon, were meant to expose decadent practices and behaviour among the people of her class, particularly those who degraded independent women. What interested her most of all was the status of women, the power of love, ethical behaviour, and the tender relations between lovers. Without love and the cultivation of love, she believed the ideal and just society could not exist.”

This edition includes the following stories: Gracieuse and Percinet; The Fair with Golden Hair; The Blue Bird; Prince Sprite; Princess Printaniere; Princess Rosette; The Golden Branch; The Bee and the Orange Tree; The Good Little Mouse; The Ram; Finette Cendron; Fortunée; Babiolle; The Yellow Dwarf; Green-Serpent; The Princess Carpillon; The Beneficent Frog; The Hind in the Wood; The White Cat; Belle-Belle; or, the Chevalier Fortuné; The Pigeon and the Dove; Princess Belle-Etoile and Prince Cheri.