Tales of Passed Times - Illustrated by Charles Robinson. Charles Perrault

      Tales

      of

      Passed Times

      Told By

      Master Charles Perrault

      Illustrated by

      Johnny Gruelle

      Copyright © 2015 Pook Press

      An imprint of Read Publishing Ltd.

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      This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or

      copied in any way without the express permission of

      the publisher in writing.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from

      the British Library.

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      Contents

       List of Illustrations

       Charles Perrault

       Charles Robinson

       The Sleeping Beauty In The Wood

       Little Red Riding-Hood

       Blue Beard

       Master Cat; Or, Puss In Boots

       The Fairies

       Cinderella; Or, The Little Glass Slipper

       Riquet With The Tuft

       Little Thumbling

       Beauty And The Beast

       The Benevolent Frog

       Princess Rosette

      List of Illustrations

       She fell into a swoon.

       Grandma, what great ears you have!

       “Your tears are useless” said Bluebeard, “you must die!”

       Puss among the reapers.

       She gave it to the Woman.

       The King’s son gave her his hand.

       Then said the Princess “I wish that you may be the handsomest prince in the world.”

       The boys followed him.

       Her father was just arriving.

       She saw beside her a woman of a gigantic size.

       “Oh, you are jesting;” replied the King of the Peacocks.

      Biography

      of

      Charles Perrault

      Charles Perrault was born on 12th January 1628. He was a French author and member of the Académie française, who laid the foundations for a new literary genre; the fairy tale. The best known of Perrault’s tales include Le Petit Chaperon (Little Red Riding Hood), Cendrillon (Cinderella), Le Chat Botté (Puss in Boots), La Belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty) and La Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard). Many of Perrault’s stories, which were re-written by the brothers Grimm, continue to be printed and have been adapted to opera, ballet (such as Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty), theatre and film (Walt Disney). Perrault was a highly influential figure in the seventeenth century French literary scene and was also the leader of the ‘Modern faction’ during the ‘Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.’

      Perrault was born into a wealthy bourgeois Parisian family, the seventh child of Pierre Perrault and Paquette Le Clerc. He attended good schools in the city and studied law before embarking on a career in government service (following in the footsteps of his father and older brother Jean). Perrault also took part in the creation of the Academy of Sciences as well as the restoration of the Academy of Painting. In 1654 he moved in with his brother Pierre, who had purchased a post as the principal tax collector of the city of Paris. ‘Buying’ official government roles was a common practice in seventeenth century France, as chances for self-aggrandizement were rife! Following on from this, when the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres was founded in 1663, Perrault was appointed as its secretary, and served under Jean Baptiste Colbert (finance minister to Louis XIV).

      In 1668 Perrault wrote La Peinture (Painting) to honour the King’s first painter, Charles Le Brun. He also wrote Courses de testes et de Bague (Head and Ring Races, 1670) to commemorate the 1662 celebrations staged by Louis for his mistress, Louise-Françoise de La Baume le Blanc, duchesse de La Vallière. Perrault himself got married in 1672, to Marie Guichon (aged just nineteen). She sadly died only six years later. This was a very busy time in Perrault’s life and in 1669 he helped Louis XIV design the gardens of Versailles. Perrault persuaded the King to include thirty-nine fountains, each representing one of the fables of Aesop in the labyrinth section of the Versailles gardens, and the work was carried out between 1672 and 1677. Water jets spurting from the animals mouths were conceived to give the impression of speech between the creatures. There was a plaque with a caption and a quatrain written by the poet Isaac de Benserade next to each fountain.

      On being elected to the Académie française in 1671, Perrault initiated the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which pitted supporters of the literature of Antiquity (the ‘Ancients’) against supporters of the literature from the century of Louis XIV (the ‘Moderns’). Perrault was on the side of the Moderns and wrote Le Siècle de Louis le Grand (The Century of Louis the Great, 1687) and Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes (Parallel between Ancients and Moderns, 1688–1692) where he attempted to prove the superiority of the literature