More than any other British writer of the second half of the nineteenth century, Andrew Lang successfully championed the fairy tale as appropriate reading material for children. This astonishingly productive man of letters influenced children's literature in two ways: as the editor of the immensely popular twelve-volume color fairy book series begun with the publication of the Blue Fairy Book (1889), and as the author of five literary fairy tales for children.

Despite Lang's repeated assertions in prefaces to the color fairy books that he was merely the editor and did not invent the stories, his readers frequently incorrectly credited him as their author. While Lang selected the tales, assigned the translations, and wrote the prefaces to the color fairy books, his wife, Leonora Blanche Lang, did much of the other work of the series. In the preface to The-Lilac Fairy Book (1910), the final volume in the series, Lang...