The Tales of Mother Goose

A gentleman's daughter banished to the chimney corner by a haughty stepmother, forced to scrub floors and sleep in a garret upon a wretched straw bed; a clever cat scheming to elevate his destitute master's social standing; an aristocrat with a blue beard who forbids his new bride from opening a single locked door in their chateau; a young girl carrying a basket through the woods.

Charles Perrault gathered these eight narratives from French oral tradition and set them down for the drawing rooms of seventeenth-century courtly society. The collection features the original texts of *Cinderella*, *The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods*, *Little Thumb*, and *Riquet with the Tuft*. In these pages, ordinary people and royal courts alike face sudden metamorphosis, fairy curses, and strict moral instruction.

First published in 1697, this volume codified European folklore and established the foundation of children's literature as a distinct written form.