Mother Goose's French Birth And British Afterlife

Unlike the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault's name remains generally unrecognizable. Yet, his stories, first published in 1697 as the Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (Stories or Tales of The Past) are anything but.

Most readers no doubt know the titles of Perrault's books in English, not French and, in that sense, are familiar not with Perrault's stories per se, but with the healthy tradition of English translation, inaugurated in 1729. Precious little has been said about those published words - the language of the eighteenth century that turned Cendrillon into Cinderella.