Books of wonder

Here are thirty-one enchanting selections drawn from Andrew Lang's famous series of colorfully titled fairy tale anthologies. Scholar, poet, novelist, and literary critic, Lang tirelessly collected magical stories from cultures all over the world-stories, according to Lang, that "have been inherited by our earliest civilised ancestors, who really believed that beasts and trees and stones can talk if they choose, and behave kindly or unkindly." The...

The young King Arthur asks for and receives the noble sword Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake and promises to be deserving of it through acts of valor.

The protagonist is Tom, a young chimney sweep, who falls into a river after encountering an upper-class girl named Ellie and being chased out of her house. There he appears to drown and is transformed into a "water-baby", as he is told by a caddisfly-an insect that sheds its skin-and begins his moral education. The story is thematically concerned with Christian redemption, though Kingsley also uses the book to argue that England treats its poor badly,...

Lancelot is welcomed into the court of King Arthur as a valiant fighter and later rescues Queen Guinevere, fights the tournament at Astolat, and pursues other adventures.