Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales: From Mother Goose to Fine Bindings

A glass slipper, a forbidden room, a cat in boots: few writers are remembered through objects as vividly as Charles Perrault. His fairy tales seem so familiar that it is easy to forget how surprising they remain on the page. Behind the transformations and royal weddings lie questions about trust, ambition, kindness, and the hazards of finding one’s way in the world. 

For the collector, these stories offer another pleasure. Each illustrated edition gives them a new setting, shaped by the paper, the artist’s line, and the binding. A beautiful old copy of Perrault preserves a particular generation’s way of imagining enchantment.

The stories behind Mother Goose

In 1697, the Paris publisher Claude Barbin issued Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités. Its frontispiece carried the words Contes de ma mère l’Oye, the name that connects the collection with Mother Goose. The Bibliothèque nationale de France’s record of the original edition identifies eight prose tales, including Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella.

Perrault gave enduring literary form to material with roots in earlier storytelling traditions. His economy is part of the achievement: a few details establish a household, a predicament, and a character whose choices suddenly matter. A small kindness may be rewarded; a confident appearance may conceal danger.

The moralities are essential to that voice. Their presence in the book’s original title reminds us that these tales were also invitations to reflect on behaviour. Reading them alongside the stories restores something often lost when we remember only the familiar plot.

Wonder with a darker edge

Returning to Perrault can be an unsettling experience. In his Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf devours the child, and the story ends there. As the BnF’s discussion of the tale explains, its warning about predatory charm is explicit. That ending gives the seemingly simple encounter in the woods a very different force from many later retellings.

This closeness between wonder and danger helps explain the stories’ lasting power. Their beautiful clothes, castles, and magical gifts exist in a world where appearances require scrutiny. Reading them as an adult brings a fresh awareness of how much can be held within a short tale: vulnerability, social ambition, fear, and the hope that a life might change.

Verse and prose: a useful distinction for collectors

The familiar prose stories are only part of Perrault’s fairy-tale writing. Grisélidis, Peau d’Âne, and Les Souhaits ridicules belong to an earlier group of tales in verse, published between 1691 and 1694. Later collections brought these works together with the stories of 1697, as the BnF’s catalogue notes.

That distinction is worth remembering when comparing old editions. A title such as Contes or Contes de fées does not, by itself, tell us exactly which texts are included. The contents, language, and arrangement deserve as much attention as the date on the title page.

How illustrators shape a familiar story

Illustrations become part of the way a tale is remembered. The scale of a forest, the expression of a wolf, or the distance between a child and a doorway can change the atmosphere before a sentence has been read.

Gustave Doré’s celebrated interpretation, published by Hetzel in 1862, is an important landmark in this history. The BnF records that edition with its illustrations and preface by P.-J. Stahl. For collectors, it also provides a useful reminder: the first appearance of an illustrator’s work and the first publication of the underlying text are two different bibliographical events.

Adolphe Lalauze’s etchings offer another nineteenth-century interpretation. Encountering his work in a carefully printed bibliophile edition invites us to slow down, moving between the tale and its image. The illustrator becomes a companion to the reading.

A closer look: the 1876 edition in Ramage bindings

A particularly appealing example in the MFLIBRA catalogue is the 1876 two-volume edition of Les Contes de Ch. Perrault, bound by Ramage. Published in Paris by the Librairie des Bibliophiles, Jouaust, it separates the Contes en vers from the Contes en prose and includes a preface by Paul Lacroix, writing as P. L. Jacob, together with Baron Walckenaer’s dissertation on fairy tales.

Our catalogued set is printed on Holland paper and belongs to the 170-copy Holland-paper portion of a 200-copy large-paper issue. This is a nineteenth-century bibliophile edition of a seventeenth-century classic. Its appeal brings together the texts, Lalauze’s etchings, generous margins, and the care devoted to the physical book.

The matching bindings are signed “Bound by Ramage, London.” Dark brown morocco, raised bands, and gilt lettering give the pair a restrained presence. Inside, gilt dentelles and marbled endpapers add colour and ornament. The top edges are gilt, while the remaining edges are untrimmed. Such details reward close looking and help explain why a later edition can be a deeply satisfying object to collect.

Choosing a copy to live with

With Perrault, the best collecting questions begin with the individual book:

• Which tales does it contain? Check whether the volume includes prose, verse, or a selection, and whether the text is complete or adapted.
• Whose illustrations accompany it? Identify the artist and the edition, then check the plates against the requirements of that particular printing.
• What does the binding contribute? A publisher’s binding and a signed later binding offer different kinds of interest. Look at the workmanship, condition, and relationship to the text.
• What makes this copy distinctive? Paper, margins, bookplates, inscriptions, and the survival of its original components can all deepen its appeal.

At MFLIBRA, we are drawn to books in which these pleasures come together. Perrault’s tales are especially rewarding company: their stories may already belong to our memories, yet an old illustrated edition can make us pause over them again.

Explore the 1876 Perrault set, with photographs and full bibliographical details.

Featured photograph: MFLIBRA’s two-volume 1876 edition of Perrault’s tales in signed Ramage bindings.