This collection of Fairy Stories published by Birn Brothers Ltd is a royal blue hardcover book with the same front and back covers featuring the three main characters of the fairy tales contained in the book: Dick Whittington and his cat, Cinderella, and Goldilocks, here holding Baby Bear. They are featured inside a circling frame. The book also sports the sales pitch of an "All Colour Book". There is no author(s) or illustrator(s) attributed. There is also no publication date. I'm not sure when publishing companies first starting putting out "All Colour Book[s]" and some research into this might help me to pin down a date range for this collection.
The collection features three stories: 'Cinderella', 'Dick Whittington', and 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. 'Cinderella' and 'Dick Whittington' cover seven pages apiece, and 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' five pages. (The book itself is unpaginated). These fairy tale characters are the three rosy-cheeked figures featured on the front and back cover, in the endpapers, and again on the title page. Although the figures on the cover, endpapers, title page, and story illustrations are clothed the same, some apparent differences in style suggest they may not be drawn by the same illustrator(s).
The endpapers for this collection are lovely – on a creamy yellow background are loose circles of colour, each featuring characters from the three fairy tales in the book. The front endpapers feature Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother, Dick Whittington and his cat, and Goldilocks and Baby Bear. The back endpapers feature Baby Bear discovering his broken chair, Dick Whittington farewelling the ship his cat is departing on, Cinderella (looking very much like the winner of a beauty pageant!), an underling carrying Cinderella's slipper, and the Sultan who makes Dick Whittington rich, featured with Puss and her kittens.
I couldn't find any other copies of this collection online, but I did find references to two related books published by Birn Brothers, one also called Fairy Stories and the other Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes. Both books are also undated, but the yellow cover Fairy Stories has black and white illustrations that date it to an earlier time. Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes appears to also be full colour, so could come before or after the blue cover Fairy Stories I own.
Photo credits: Fairy Stories and Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes
The yellow cover version of Fairy Stories appears to be a much longer collection of retold fairytales. Based on the photos shared on ebay, it contains at least 'Red Riding Hood', 'Dick Whittington', 'Beauty and the Beast', 'Cinderella', 'Robinson Crusoe', 'Hop 'o My Thumb', 'The Goose Girl', and 'Aladdin'. Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes is also a much longer collection, containing 58 nursery rhymes, mixed in with retellings of 'Cinderella', 'Snow-White and Rose-Red', 'The Goose Girl', 'Aladdin', 'Hansel and Grethel' [sic], 'Robinson Crusoe', and 'Little Tuk'.
I was able to compare several of the stories and illustrations of blue Fairy Stories with the other collections, thanks to pages shared on Etsy and ebay.
Cinderella
The text for my (blue cover) Fairy Stories version of Cinderella is a variation of the text published in the Birn Brothers earlier (yellow cover) Fairy Stories and in their Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes.
In the first image above, the story begins 'There was once upon a time a girl...' compared with 'Once upon a time there was a [beautiful] girl' in the other two versions.
The stories are ultimately the same, but there are many minor differences between them. The version in my (blue cover) Fairy Stories feels more polished to me, suggesting it could be the most recently published version.
There are some similarities between the illustrations of each book (e.g. the way the Fairy Godmother is detailed), but also some interesting differences. Compare Cinderella sewing below. Again, I'm inclined to think the style in the (blue cover) Fairy Stories version is more modern, suggesting it could be the most recently published version.
The story itself is told with a refreshing lightness. There is no father or stepmother mentioned, only two much older sisters, named Belinda and Jemima. There is no explanation as to Cinderella and her sisters' positions in life, although there are many lords and ladies at the ball. It is a simple story, in which ugliness of form = ugliness of character, and prettiness of form = prettiness of character, and with an uncomplicated INSTALOVE between the prince and Cinderella.
I hadn't come across Belinda and Jemima as names for the ugly stepsisters before, but they are used by Hilary Mantel in her 2009 short story "Cinderella in Autumn", published by The Guardian, which makes me wonder if the names have been used more widely, or if Hilary Mantel grew up with a copy of the Birn Brothers fairy stories?
Dick Whittington
I think this may be the first time I've ever actually read the story of Dick Whittington, although I knew he was a boy with a knapsack who went to London to find his fortune, and became the mayor.
In this version of the story, Dick has no parents and wanders from town to town to find work, with only his tabby Puss for company. He gets a job as a kitchen boy in a big house but is mistreated by the mean-tempered cook. One day he starts to run away but the bells of London call to him, foretelling his future as London's mayor, and he returns to find the cook fired and his life improved. The master asks the servants to give the captain of his ship something to take with him to exchange for riches on his overseas voyage, which I found a bit perplexing as it seemed unlikely that the servants would have much to exchange. Dick is prompted to send Puss. The cat does a great service for the Sultan, whose kingdom is overrun by mice, and Dick earns his fortune through his cat.
Dick Whittington doesn't appear to be in the Birn Brothers Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes but does make an appearance in their earlier Fairy Stories. Unlike with Cinderella, that story appears to be completely different from the version found here. Compare the opening of the story in each collection:
The later parts of each story are also quite different. In the earlier Fairy Stories, Dick meets a girl named Alice and "when Dick, who had never seen her before, looked up through his tears he thought he had never seen anyone as pretty as Alice, and he fell in love with her straightaway. They talked to one another, and Dick soon felt sure that Alice loved him, too." In the later Fairy Stories, the girl Dick will marry is unnamed, only described as "his master's daughter", and their relationship develops more slowly. I like how the picture here tells half the story:
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' doesn't appear to have been published in the earlier Fairy Stories or Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes, although it is entirely possible it was published in some other collection by Birn Brothers before its appearance in this collection.
In this retelling, Goldilocks is out collecting flowers when she sees a house and wonders who lives there. Finding no-one inside, she steps in for a peek, and then proceeds with the very familiar story (featuring porridge tasting, chair breaking, and bed rumpling). The bears are described as a Great Big Bear, a Middle-sized Bear, and a Teeny-Tiny Bear, although sometimes the middle bear is described as Mother Bear. The story ends with Goldilocks' escape – "and after that she determined not to go into other people's houses unless she was invited!" I particularly liked this image of a fleeing Goldilocks, with her hair streaming out behind her.
Although I can find no other copies of my blue cover Fairy Stories online, perhaps there are still some out there in the world, waiting to be found on dusty bookshelves in old out-of-the-way bookstores, which is where I found mine.
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