Fairy Tales from All Nations

The time has been, but happily exists no longer, when it would have been necessary to offer an apology for such a book as this. In those days it was not held that Beauty is its own excuse for being; on the contrary, a spurious utilitarianism reigned supreme in literature, and fancy and imagination were told to fold their wings, and travel only in the dusty paths of everyday life. Fairy tales, and all such flights into the region of the supernatural, were then condemned as merely idle things...