The Brown Fairy Book

Thirty-two tales from India, Africa, Australia, Persia and Lapland: the bunyip, the Red Indian Ball-Carrier and the Bad One, and what the rose did to the cypress. Lang's series drew on ethnographers' collections as they were published, so the brown book has stories that had never been in English before. Nine paintings by Corot, Daubigny, Cézanne and others carry the reader from wooded glades and winter farmsteads to a horse at a cottage gate, a landscape fitting for tales gathered from many lands.