Description:
'I have been a lover of fairy stories since I learned to read, ' J.R.R. Tolkien stated. The Red Fairy Book was one of his favorites. Both the stories and the detailed pictures influenced the writing of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
Brief description: Many of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books were illustrated by Henry J. Ford, with Lancelot Speed also contributing some illustrations. Henry Justice Ford (1860-1941) was a prolific and successful English artist and illustrator, active from 1886 through to the late 1920s. Sometimes known as H. J. Ford or Henry J. Ford, he came to public attention when he provided the numerous beautiful illustrations for Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, which captured the imagination of a generation of British children and were sold worldwide in the 1880s and 1890s. Lancelot Speed (13 June 1860 - 31 December 1931) was a Victorian illustrator of books, usually of a fantastical or romantic nature. He is probably most well known for his illustrations for Andrew Lang's fairy story books. [Wikipedia]
Review Quotes:
As a Tolkien enthusiast, I read The Red Fairy Book because I wanted to know about Tolkien's early influences. Andrew Lang's books were the first books that Tolkien ever read, he owned The Red Fairy Book and even after long time he remembered it fondly. If you are searching for Tolkien in this book you will not be disappointed. You will find there the source for the name of Pippin for instance, you will find in the stories grains of ideas and themes that later found themselves in LOTR. But you will find there more than just LOTR references. You will find great stories, some of them a little naive for the cynical reader, but all of them interesting. Even if you are adult, this book will conquer you completely. This is a book for all the members of the family. You will love it and your children will love it. Some of the stories are suitable for very small children to read to them before bedtime. If you are searching for so called "sophisticated" books, this book is not for you. It contained simple stories, some of them with moral and it is lacking complex motives and emotions, after all, it is fairy tales.
Ran Bar Zikon
It can be difficult to find a fairy tale collection that manages to hit on a wider spectrum of stories, rather than the mish-mash collections of everything that everyone has memorized or the collections that go out of the way to find the most unknown and unusual. This has both, from the familiar to the distinctly different, and told in a classic Victorian voice. There is a story for everyone here, romantic, macabre, and even funny, and from a variety of countries and cultures. It's a good, basic show of different types of stories, and each one is memorable! Definitely a must-have for the fairy tale collector!
Emily J Morris