The Essential Works of Andrew Lang

by Andrew Lang, Golgotha Press

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a very large anthology, and some people have experienced trouble navigating the work. To find each work in the anthology, you must go to the "Go To" section of your Nook, and then select "Chapter." It might get a blank screen--if it does, then hit the page forward button and the work will appear.

Several dozen works by Andrew Lang are collected in this massive anthology with active table of contents. Works include:

Adventures among Books
Alfred Tennyson
Angling Sketches
The Arabian Nights Entertainments
Ballads in Blue China
Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: With Other Poems
Ban and Arriere Ban--A Rally of Fugitive Rhymes
The Book of Dreams and Ghosts
Books and Bookmen
The Brown Fairy Book
The Clyde Mystery
Cock Lane and Common-Sense
A Collection of Ballads
The Crimson Fairy Book
Custom and Myth
The Disentanglers
Essays in Little
The Gold Of Fairnilee
Grass of Parnassus
The Green Fairy Book
The Grey Fairy Book
He
Helen of Troy
Historical Mysteries
Homer and His Age
Homeric Hymns
How to Fail in Literature
In the Wrong Paradise
In the Wrong Paradise
Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler
James VI and the Gowrie Mystery
John Knox and the Reformation
Letters on Literature
Letters to Dead Authors
The Library
The Making of Religion
The Lilac Fairy Book
Lost Leaders
The Mark Of Cain
Modern Mythology
A Monk of Fife
Darker Days
Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol 1
New Collected Rhymes
Old Friends, Epistolary Parody
The Olive Fairy Book
The Orange Fairy Book
Oxford (City & University)
Pickle the Spy (or, The Incognito of Prince Charles)
The Pink Fairy Book
Tales of Troy
The True Story Book
The Valet’s Tragedy and Other Studies
The Violet Fairy Book
World's Desire
The Yellow Fairy Book
Prince Prigio
Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia
The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
The Red Fairy
The Red Romance Book
The Red True Story Book
Rhymes a la Mode
A Short History of Scotland
Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy

Kindle Edition

First published September 6, 2010

About the author

Tales of the Scottish writer and anthropologist Andrew Lang include The Blue Fairy Book (1889).

Andrew Gabriel Lang, a prolific Scotsman of letters, contributed poetry, novels, literary criticism, and collected now best folklore.

The Young Scholar and Journalist
Andrew Gabriel Lang, the son of the town clerk and the eldest of eight children, lived in Selkirk in the Scottish borderlands. The wild and beautiful landscape of childhood greatly affected the youth and inspired a lifelong love of the outdoors and a fascination with local folklore and history. Charles Edward Stuart and Robert I the Bruce surrounded him in the borders, a rich area in history. He later achieved his literary Short History of Scotland .

A gifted student and avid reader, Lang went to the prestigious Saint Andrews University, which now holds a lecture series in his honor every few years, and then to Balliol College, Oxford. He later published Oxford: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes about the city in 1880.

Moving to London at the age of 31 years in 1875 as an already published poet, he started working as a journalist. His dry sense of humor, style, and huge array of interests made him a popular editor and columnist quickly for The Daily Post, Time magazine and Fortnightly Review. Whilst working in London, he met and married Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang, his wife.

Interest in myths and folklore continued as he and Leonora traveled through France and Italy to hear local legends, from which came the most famous The Rainbow Fairy Books . In the late 19th century, interest in the native stories declined and very few persons recounting them for young readers. In fact, some educationalists attacked harmful magical stories in general to children. To challenge this notion, Lang first began collecting stories for the first of his colored volumes.

Lang gathered already recorded stories, while other folklorists collected stories directly from source. He used his time to collect a much greater breadth over the world from Jacob Grimm, his brother, Madame d'Aulnoy, and other less well sources.
Lang also worked as the editor, often credited as its sole creator for his work despite the essential support of his wife, who transcribed and organised the translation of the text, to the success.

He published to wide acclaim. The beautiful illustrations and magic captivated the minds of children and adults alike. The success first allowed Lang and Leonora to carry on their research and in 1890 to publish a much larger print run of The Red Fairy Book , which drew on even more sources. Between 1889 and 1910, they published twelve collections, which, each with a different colored binding, collected, edited and translated a total of 437 stories. Lang, credited with reviving interest in folklore, more importantly revolutionized the Victorian view and inspired generations of parents to begin reading them to children once more.

Last Works
Lang produced and at the same time continued a wide assortment of novels, literary criticism, articles, and poetry. As Anita Silvey, literary critic, however, noted, "The irony of Lang's life and work is that although he wrote for a profession... he is best recognized for the works he did not write," the folk stories that he collected.

He finished not the last Highways and Byways of the Border but died.