When we think of France in the year 1789, we think of the fall of the Bastille and the falling blade of the guillotine. Yet, during July of that year, one M. Cuchet of Paris published the last volume in a forty-one-volume set of fairy tales, the Cabinet des Fées. Over the centuries, these tales have become some of the best-loved classics of both children and adults. Four of the most popular stories from that collection—"The Sleeping Beauty," "Blue Beard," "Cinderella," and "Beauty and the Beast"—are included here, illustrated with incomparable skill by Edmund Dulac.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, who has retold these tales from the French, reminds us that, in spite of the revolution around them, the French upper classes of that time were characterized by "a remarkable sunniness of disposition," as well as a penchant for elegance and tasteful living. These tales and their popularity at the time illustrate this good-tempered quality very well.

Although the tales were originally written in the seventeenth century, Edmund Dulac has appropriately drawn his princes and princesses in costumes of the eighteenth century—when the stories were at the height of their popularity. This early twentieth-century illustrator graced the pages of many popular books with his imaginative creations. His extraordinary use of sparkling light and color highlights these enchanting and magical characters and their dream worlds. It is as if he himself had a generous fairy godmother who waved her wand over his canvases. As well as depicting the elegant world of nobility and the ethereal world of fairies, Dulac masterfully captures the world of the frightening and the mysterious.

All these different worlds have delighted young and old readers alike for nearly three centuries. Not only have these tales withstood the test of time, but they have also inspired some of the world's greatest artists. Tchaikovsky's ballet Sleeping Beauty and Jean Cocteau's cinematic masterpiece Beauty and the Beast are but two examples.

In addition to these two tales, there are "Cinderella," the wonderful story in which the good are rewarded and the evil repent and are forgiven, and "Blue Beard," a strange tale that fills readers with terror even though they know the heroine will be saved in the end.

Here then is a world where one dream melts away, only to be replaced by another; where dwarves cover huge distances in no time at all with seven-league boots; where fairies are "never long about their business." The more practical-minded reader will find the morals at the end of the stories quite valuable, such as the following from "Cinderella":

Yet youth that is poor of purse,
     No matter how witty or handsome,
Will find its talents no worse
    For a godmamma to advance 'em.

From the dust jacket of the 1978 Weathervan Books edition