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Notes
Reeve, Progress of Romance (Facs. edn., 1930), II, 60. The French writer referred to is Marie-Cathérine Jumelle de Barneville, Madame d'Aulnoy (ca. 1650-1703), who made contributions not only to the fairy tale but to memoir and travel literature and to the sentimental, pseudohistorical roman and nouvelle.
The vogue for contes de fées in France has been studied by Mary Elizabeth Storer, La Mode des contes de fées (1685-1700) (1928). The corresponding vogue in England has received scant attention.
Esdaile, List of English Tales and Prose Romances Printed before 1740 (1912), p. 256. Esdaile lists Mme d'Aulnoy's work under "La Mothe," the surname of her husband. Joseph E. Tucker has called the 1699 collection a ghost—"Wing's Short Title Catalogue and Translations from the French, 1641-1700," PBSA, 49 (1955), 45.
Fénelon's tales appeared in his Fables and Dialogues of the Dead (1722), trans. Nathaniel Gifford, and Twenty Seven Moral Tales and Fables (1729), trans. Daniel Bellamy. Perrault's tales appeared in English as Histories or Tales of Past Times (1729), trans. Robert Samber.
See Melvin D. Palmer, "The History of Adolphus (1691), the First French Conte de Fèe in England," PQ, 49 (1970), 565-68.
de Mailly is known mainly as a writer of contes galants and is called a "littérateur médiocre" in Michaud's Biographie universelle. On de Mailly's authorship of these tales, see Storer, p. 166.
That B. H.'s shortened versions were not appreciated in all quarters is indicated by the Preface to the 1721 Collection of Novels and Tales of the Fairies, where "W. C." (perhaps the fairly well-known publisher and writer William Chetwood) maintains that the translators of the present edition "have kept up to the Sense and Spirit of the Author," unlike "the Gentleman that lately gave us a Piece in English of this incomparable Lady's writing . . . ." (pp. viii-ix.)
Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, comtesse de Murat, wrote mainly histoires, contes de fées, and some poetry. Because her style is much like Mme d'Aulnoy's, her tales could easily have been taken for Mme d'Aulnoy's.
The 1721 edition had been printed for "W. Taylor and W. Chitwood [sic]." The 1728 volume was printed for "J. Brotherton, W. Meadows, Tho. Edlin, and Tho. Astley."
Louise de Bossigny, comtesse d'Auneuil, wrote practically nothing but fairy tales. It is not entirely strange that the English translator would choose Mme d'Auneuil's tales to publish as Mme d'Aulnoy's. Since Mme d'Aulnoy's name was spelled variously, the translator might have thought d'Auneuil to be a variant spelling of d'Aulnoy. The anonymous Florina is listed as anonymous in the Silas P. Jones List of French Prose Fiction from 1700 to 1750 (1939), p. 22. The preface to the Cabinet des fées (Genève, 1787-89, p. 395) edition of Florine indicates that the author was a man, but it is simply impossible to hazard a confident opinion on the authorship of this tale. At any rate, it is not Mme d'Aulnoy's.
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