University of Virginia Library

English Editions of French Contes De Fees Attributes to Mme d'Aulnoy
by
Nancy and Melvin Palmer

In 1785 when Clara Reeve looked back seven or eight decades and recalled Mme d'Aulnoy as "a famous composer of Fairy Tales,"[1] she was correct in singling Mme d'Aulnoy out for special attention as an author of contes de fées, but she did not know that twenty-eight of the tales which came into England under Mme d'Aulnoy's name were by four other French writers. Nor has any other literary historian noticed this fact.[2] Furthermore, the 1699 edition of d'Aulnoy tales listed by Arundel Esdaile is regarded today as a bibliographical ghost.[3] In other words, except for the English collections of Fénelon's and Charles Perrault's fairy tales,[4] the French fairy tale in England is a subject fraught with bibliographical confusion. These problems stand in the way of a comprehensive study of the English vogue for French fairy tales in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

This vogue was in fact initiated by Mme d'Aulnoy in 1691 with the translation of a fairy tale of hers as The History of Adolphus, which appeared, however, without author's or translator's name and which was regarded until recently as a native English work and not a translation at all.[5] After this beginning and excepting the English versions of fairy tales by Fénelon and Perrault, the French conte de fée as a genre came to England in four collections, all of them said to be Mme d'Aulnoy's work. Only two are completely the work of Mme d'Aulnoy; the other two contain tales by other hands as well as tales by Mme d'Aulnoy. These four collections

are Tales of the Fairies (1699); Volume IV of The Diverting Works of the Countess D'Anois, this volume bearing as title Tales of the Fairies in Three Parts Compleat (1707); The History of the Tales of the Fairies (1716); and A Collection of Novels and Tales of the Fairies (Volumes I and II, 1721; Volume III, 1728). The purpose of this brief study is to suggest a resolution to the problem of the 1699 bibliographical ghost and to tabulate the contents of these four collections, identifying the authors of the tales they contain.

Tales of the Fairies (1699)

Esdaile lists this book as Mme d'Aulnoy's and cites the Term Catalogues, where one finds this notation: "trans. from the Fr. T. Cockerill. 1699, 12°."[6] No copies of this book are known, and Joseph Tucker has even assumed that it was a bibliographical ghost.[7] There are good reasons to believe, however, that the book did indeed exist and that it contained four fairy tales, all in fact by Mme d'Aulnoy. When the next collection of fairy tales appeared in England in Mme d'Aulnoy's Diverting Works of 1707, the publisher said in the preface that there was already an edition of Mme d'Aulnoy's fairy tales ("first part") in English but that it could not be obtained and was thus reprinted in the Diverting Works, together with two other parts of her fairy tales. He then placed symbols (daggers) in the table of contents by those tales never before published in England. Four of the tales in this table stand without such marking; these four tales come from Tome I of Mme d'Aulnoy's French original, the 1697 Contes des fées. The omission of marks suggests that the four tales had already appeared in English. It would appear, therefore, that the 1699 edition cited in the Term Catalogues and by Esdaile was an actual book and not a ghost, and that it contained translations of the four tales of Tome I of Mme d'Aulnoy's Contes des fées: Gracieuse et Percinet, La Belle aux cheveux d'or, L'Oiseau bleu, and Le Prince Lutin.

Diverting Works, Volume IV (1707)

The Diverting Works collection includes the nine tales of Tomes I and II of Mme d'Aulnoy's Contes des fées (1697) and the eleven tales of the Chevalier de Mailly's Les Illustres fées, which had appeared anonymously in France in 1698.[8]

Mme d'Aulnoy:

• Graciosa and Percinet (Gracieuse et Percinet)
• The Fair One with Golden Locks (La Belle aux cheveux d'or)

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• The Blue-Bird (L'Oiseau bleu)
• The Hobgoblin Prince (Le Prince Lutin)
• Verenata (La Princesse Printanière)
• Rosetta (La Princesse Rosette)
• The Golden Bough (Le Rameau d'or)
• The Orange Tree and the Bee (L'Oranger et l'abeille)
• The Good Little Mouse (La Bonne petite souris)

Chev. de Mailly: (This section of the Diverting Works is subtitled "The Tales of the Fairies, or, the Illustrious Fairies.")

• The White Beauty (Blanche belle)
• The Royal Magician (Le Roy magicien)
• Prince Roger (Le Prince Roger)
• Fortunio (Fortunio)
• Guerini (Le Prince Guerini)
• The Queen of the Island of Flowers (La Reine de l'isle des fleurs)
• The Favorite of the Fairies (Le Favory des fées)
• The Well-Doer, or, Quiribini (Le Bien-faisant, ou Quiribini)
• The Princess Crown'd by the Fairies (La Princesse couronnée par les fées)
• The Baffl'd Stratagem (La Supercherie malheureuse)
• The Inaccessible Island (L'isle inaccessable)

That the eleven tales of de Mailly were not universally accepted as Mme d'Aulnoy's is made apparent in the 1716 History of the Tales of the Fairies, where "B. H." (the translator and author of the book's preface) maintains that there are several tales in existence "which go under the name of the Countess d'Anois's Tales, which indeed are spurious . . . ."[9] Indeed, de Mailly's stories clearly lack the gentle charm that colors Mme d'Aulnoy's tales and are quite a bit shorter.[10]

The History of the Tales of the Fairies (1716)

The 1716 collection contains seven of the nine tales from Tomes I and II of Mme d'Aulnoy's Contes des fées (1697), four of which had appeared in English in 1699 and 1707, and three of which had appeared in 1707: (The tales are misnumbered in the table of contents and in the text.)

• Graciosa and Percinet (Gracieuse et Percinet)
• The Blue-Bird and Florina (L'Oiseau bleu)
• The Fair Indifferent; or the Hobgoblin Prince and Furibon (Le Prince Lutin)—Not listed in table of contents.
• Prince Avenant and the Beauty with Locks of Gold (La Belle aux cheveux d'or)
• The King of the Peacocks, and the Princess Rosetta (La Princesse Rosette)
• Prince Nonpareil, and the Princess Brilliant (Le Rameau d'or)
• The Orange Tree, and its Beloved Bee (L'Oranger et l'abeille)

These tales are drastically abridged—by about one-half to two-thirds—their morals are exaggerated, and many of their episodes are sensationalized. Further, even if limitations of space demanded that "B. H." leave out

two of the nine tales of his source, there is no apparent reason for his choice of the two to leave out.[11]

A Collection of Novels and Tales of the Fairies (1721-28)

This collection appeared in three volumes, the first two in 1721 and the third in 1728. The 1721 portion contains eight tales by Mme d'Aulnoy, the three nouvelles ("novels") she used to frame her tales, and four fairy tales by Mme de Murat[12] (substituted without acknowledgement for four of Mme d'Aulnoy's tales). Following is an analysis of the 1721 portion of this collection: (Except as indicated, tales are from Tomes III and IV of Mme d'Aulnoy's Contes des fées [1697] and Tomes I through IV of her Contes Nouveaux [1698], the last two volumes of this edition also being referred to as Suite des contes nouveaux.)

The first three tales are contained in the frame story, "novel," called The History of Don Gabriel:

• The Royal Ram (Le Mouton)
• The Story of Finetta the Cinder-Girl (Finette Cendron)
• The Palace of Revenge (Le Palais de vengeance)—This is a translation of the first tale of Mme de Murat's Nouveaux contes des fées (1698). It replaces the Fortunée of Mme d'Aulnoy's collection.

At this point there is a paragraph where the English translator has Mme d'Aulnoy link the last tale with the next and then introduce the two frame stories that will house the remainder of the tales. This paragraph is not in the French original. In fact, the English translator is careful to frame the collection very well; in the French original, some tales stand outside the frame. There follows:

• The Story of Anguilletta (Anguillette)—Also by Mme de Murat, one of the three tales in her Contes des fées (1698). This story replaces the Babiolle of Mme d'Aulnoy's collection.

The next two tales are enclosed in the frame story called The History of Don Ferdinand of Toledo:

• The Story of the Yellow Dwarf (Le Nain)
• The Story of Young-and-Handsome (Jeune et Belle)—Another tale from Mme de Murat's Contes des fées (1698). It replaces the Serpentin vert of Mme d'Aulnoy's plan.

The remainder of the tales are contained in the frame story The History of the New Gentleman-Citizen:

• The Story of the White Cat (La chatte blanche)
• The Story of Fortunio (Belle-Belle ou le Chevalier Fortuné)
• The Story of the Pidgeon and the Dove (Le Pigeon et la colombe)
• The Story of the Princess Fair-Star, and Prince Chery (La Princesse Belle-Etoile et le Prince Chéry)
• The Story of the Princess Carpillona (La Princesse Carpillon)
• Perfect Love (Le Parfait amour)—the fourth and last du Murat tale, from her 1698 Contes des fées. It replaces Mme d'Aulnoy's Le Dauphin.

Volume III of this collection (erroneously called the "Second" edition) appeared in 1728 by itself, that is, without a reprinting of Volumes I and II.[13] This third volume contains twelve tales from the pen of Mme d'Auneuil and one tale whose author has not yet been identified, though the attribution of these tales to Mme d'Aulnoy has persisted down into the twentieth century.[14] The contents of this volume are as follows:

Mme d'Auneuil—The frame story (itself a fairy tale) and three inset tales from La Tiranie des fées détruite (1702): (The French original has five inset tales.)

• The Tyranny of the Fairies Destroyed (frame fairy tale, containing)
• The History of Cleonice (Not separately titled)
• The History of Princess Melicerta
• Princess Leonice

As one can see from the above, Mme d'Aulnoy did indeed dominate the English vogue for the French conte de fée, as Clara Reeve suggested. We know now that eighteen of her tales appeared in English before the nineteenth century—a larger number than those of any other writer. But we also know now that twenty-eight of the tales formerly attributed to her in England are the products of other writers.

Except for the fairy tales of Fénelon and Perrault, there were no other French contes de fées published in England in the early eighteenth century, but two of the collections discussed here did continue to delight English readers throughout the century. The History of the Tales of the Fairies (1716) appeared again in 1749, 1758, and 1781. The Collection of Novels and Tales of the Fairies (all three volumes complete) appeared twice in 1737 and again in 1749 and 1766. In 1817 it even made its way into the era of Jane Austen as Fairy Tales and Novels.

Notes