Fairy Tales From all Nations: [Illustrated Edition]

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 every-day life.

Fairy tales, and all such flights into the region of the supernatural, were then condemned as merely idle thin...