Retold from: Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault was a French writer whose 1697 book gave us the familiar “Cinderella”, “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Puss in Boots”.

Perrault was born in Paris in 1628. For many years he worked as an assistant to the minister Colbert at the court of King Louis XIV, and in 1671 he became a member of the French Academy. He wrote poems and essays and passionately argued that modern authors were no worse than the ancient ones.

He took up fairy tales only in his later years. The collection “Stories or Tales of Times Past, with Morals” came out in Paris in 1697 under the name of his son Pierre; it is also known as “Tales of Mother Goose”. Every tale ends with a short moral in verse, and the collection includes “Sleeping Beauty”, “Bluebeard” and “Hop-o’-My-Thumb”. Perrault died in 1703.

On our site you will find his “Puss in Boots”, the tale of a clever cat who helped his poor master make his way in the world.