"Beauty and the Beast" is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins. Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published by French novelist Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 in Magasin des enfants to produce the version most commonly retold. Later, Andrew Lang retold the story in Blue Fairy Book, a part of the Fairy Book series, in 1889. The fairy tale was influenced by the story of Petrus Gonsalvus as well as Ancient Greek stories such as "Cupid and Psyche" from The Golden Ass, written by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis in the second century AD, and "The Pig King", an Italian fairytale published by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in The Facetious Nights of Straparola around 1550.
Beauty releases the prince from his beastly curse. Artwork from Europa's Fairy Book, by John Batten
Illustration by Warwick Goble.
A Serbian translation from 1787, published in the old Slavonic-Serbian literary language, translated by Avram Mrazović.
Painting of Petrus Gonsalvus (c. 1580)
A fairy tale is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form the literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends and explicit moral tales, including beast fables. Prevalent elements include dragons, dwarfs, elves, fairies, giants, gnomes, goblins, griffins, merfolk, monsters, talking animals, trolls, unicorns, witches, wizards, magic, and enchantments.
The European fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in a painting by Carl Larsson in 1881.
Hop-o'-My-Thumb and the ogre in an 1865 illustration
A picture by Gustave Doré of Mother Goose reading written (literary) fairy tales
Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942)'s illustration of the Russian fairy tale about Vasilisa the Beautiful