Fairy tales from the French court writers - Perrault, Madame de Murat, Mademoiselle de la Force, Caylus, Madame de Beaumont - translated and introduced by the dramatist who put them on the London stage. Planché wrote a hundred and seventy burlesques and knew this material as a working playwright. His notes on the sources are better informed than most Victorian collections. Thirty-seven plates, from Watteau and Chardin to Manet, gather the courtly pastimes, card games and river views of the world these tales were written for.