Old French Fairy Tales

Blondine, Bonne-Biche and Beau-Minon; Good Little Henry; Princess Rosette — French fairy tales written by a Russian countess for her own grandchildren. Ségur was born Rostopchine in Moscow, married unhappily in France, and began writing in her late fifties. The tales are sweeter than Perrault's and much stricter, and the punishments are aimed squarely at the vices of well-off children. Forty-two plates of French garden life and theatre by Watteau and Renoir, from 1701 to 1894, run alongside these tales of enchanted gardens and moral reckoning.