Moonfleet

Rip van Winkle is an amiable man whose home and farm suffer from his lazy neglect; a familiar figure about the village, he is loved by all except his wife. One autumn day he escapes her nagging to wander up into the mountains, and there after drinking some liquor offered to him by a band of very strange folk, he settles down under a shady tree and falls asleep. He wakes up twenty years later and r...

When Princess Irene and her nursemaid stay out too late one night and are chased home by goblins, a young miner boy called Curdie comes to their rescue. So begins a fantastic adventure in which Irene and Curdie must try to stop a goblin invasion, helped by Irene's mysterious great-great-grandmother. This much-loved tale was a personal favouriteof C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Thi...

The beautiful Scheherazade's royal husband threatens to kill her, so each night she diverts him by weaving wonderful tales of fantastic adventure, leaving each story unfinished so that he spares her life to hear the ending the next night. This is the background to the Arabian Nights. In this selection made by that master of folklore and fairy-tale Andrew Lang, the reader meets Aladdin wit...

?Hello, I?m Raggedy Ann. Welcome to my world. I?m going to tell you about myself and this book. Some grown-ups think I?m just another rag doll with floppy arms and legs who has been nibbled by the mice but they are wrong. When the other toys and I are left alone we get up to all sorts of games and adventures. Once I nearly got boiled to bits in the washing machine. Then I had fun with t...

Tom, a poor orphan, is employed by the villainous chimney-sweep, Grimes, to climb up inside flues to clear away the soot. While engaged in this dreadful task, he loses his way and emerges in the bedroom of Ellie, the young daughter of the house who mistakes him for a thief. He runs away, and, hot and bothered, he slips into a cooling stream, falls asleep, and becomes a Water Baby. In his new l...

In this selection of tales by the master folklorist Andrew Lang, the reader is taken into the romantic world of the gallant Knights of the Round Table and their courageous and chivalrous deeds, fair maidens, castles steeped in history, the quest for the Holy Grail, and the tragic love of King Arthur and Sir Lancelot for Guinevere, and Tristan for Iseult. The Arthurian legends are the most pote...