The Blue Fairy Book is a series of 25 compilations of factual and made-up stories for kids that Andrew Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne, produced between 1889 and 1913. The 12 collections of fairy tales that make up Andrew Lang's "Colored" Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors are the most well-known books in the series. Along with the 153 poems in The Blue Poetry Book, the volumes contain a total of 798 stories. The majority of the labor was done by Nora, even though Andrew is frequently given credit for choosing the stories in the Fairy Books. These were translated into English by her and a group of writers, largely women, including May Kendall and Violet Hunt, who modified them to fit Victorian and Edwardian expectations of decorum. The Green Fairy Book, the third book in the series, is where Nora's contribution is first acknowledged. She is then given the following name: "Madame Lang " and writes the majority of the retellings. Henry Justice Ford illustrated The Red Book of Heroes (1909) and The Book of The 12 Colored Fairy Books; credit for the first two volumes was split between G. P. Jacomb-Hood and Lancelot Speed.
Andrew Lang was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to anthropology who lived from 31 March 1844 to 20 July 1912. He is primarily known for being a folklore and fairy story collector. At the University of St. Andrews, he is honored through the Andrew Lang lectures. In the Scottish Borders town of Selkirk, Lang was born in 1844. He was the oldest of the eight children born to John Lang, the town clerk of Selkirk, and Jane Plenderleath Sellar, who was a relative of the first Duke of Sutherland. Jane Plenderleath Sellar was the daughter of Patrick Sellar. He wed Leonora Blanche Alleyne, the youngest child of C. T. Alleyne of Clifton and Barbados, on April 17, 1875. She was alternately acknowledged as the author, co-author, or translator of Lang's Color/Rainbow Fairy Books, which he edited (or should have been). He attended the Edinburgh Academy, Loretto School, Selkirk Grammar School, and University of St. Andrews as well as Balliol College in Oxford, where he earned a first-class degree in the final classical schools in 1868. From there, he went on to become a fellow and later an honorary fellow of Merton College. As a journalist, poet, critic, and historian, he quickly established himself as one of the best and most diverse writers of his day.
