Lang" and suggests that his part in their creation was that of "Adam, according to Mark Twain, in the Garden of Eden. Eve worked, Adam superintended." So to think of Lang as the sole or even the primary editor of the color fairy books is a mistake. This does not, however, diminish Lang's important role in the series. He was clearly a well-established author and editor whose name lent the volumes credence and respectability.
A prolific writer, Lang produced 120 books and pamphlets, edited or appeared as a contributor in another 150 volumes, and penned more than 5,000 essays, articles, and reviews. He was a folklorist, classical scholar, poet, novelist, journalist, and editor who lived by his pen, capable of producing something worth saying on nearly any topic that caught his fancy, which earned him the reputation, coined by William Ernest Henley, of "the divine amateur of letters."
Born in Selkirk, Scotland, on 31 March 1844, Andrew Lang recalls in his Adventures Among Books (1905) that "When I was a little boy, it is to be supposed that I was a little muff: for I read every fairy tale that I could lay my hands on." A bookish child, Lang seemed more at home in fairyland than in his own period.
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