Excerpt from the Preface: The success attending the publication of a new translation of the Fairy Tales of the Countess d'Aulnoy has justified the publishers in believing that an equally faithful version of some of the most popular stories of her contemporaries and immediate successors, similarly annotated, might meet with as favourable a reception. I have therefore selected twenty-four of the best Fairy Tales, according to my judgment, remaining in the Cabinet des F es, commencing with those of Charles Perrault, the earliest, and terminating with some of Madame Leprince de Beaumont, the latest French writer of European celebrity in that particular class of literature. Independently of the fact that, with the exception of those of Madame de Beaumont, few if any in the present volume have ever been placed in their integrity before the English reader, I trust that the chronological order I have observed in their arrangement will give them a novel interest in the eyes of those "children of a larger growth," who are not ashamed to confess, with La Fontaine- Si "Peau d'ane" m' toit cont J'y prendrais un plaisir extr me. Or with the great Reformer, Martin Luther- "I would not for any quantity of gold part with the wonderful tales which I have retained from my earliest childhood or have met with in my progress through life."