Enlightenment · Europe · Culture

1697

Perrault Publishes Tales of Mother Goose

1697

The French academician Charles Perrault gathered Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and Puss in Boots into a slim volume of fairy tales he attributed, with courtly modesty, to old wives and nursemaids. The Histoires ou contes du temps passe invented a literary genre and gave every childhood since its library of nightmares and wishes.