This timeline includes publication dates for fairy tale texts within both the Fairy Web Literary Fairy Tale Dataset and the Fairy Web Anthology and Popular Fairy Tale Dataset, as well as dates for fairy tale texts that are historically or contextually relevant to the texts and/or authors included in both datasets.
Fairy tale texts that appear in blue are from the Fairy Web Literary Fairy Tale Dataset, while texts in green are from the Fairy Web Anthology and Popular Fairy Tale Dataset. Texts that appear in white are provided for historical context.
N.B.: this timeline is in no way comprehensive or exhaustive, but rather contains relevant information that was utilized for this digital humanities project.
1550-1553
Giovanni Francesco Straparola published
1634-1636
Giambattista Basile published
1697
Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy published
1697
Charles Perrault published
1699
D'Aulnoy's text first translated into English
1704-1705
Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve published in La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins (The Young American and Marine Tales)
1704-1717
Antoine Galland’s work begins to circulate in Europe
1729
Perrault's text first translated into English by Robert Samber
1802 - 1803
An essay by Sir Walter Scott is published in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
1805
Wieland's work is translated, which inspired other fairy plays, ballets, and Weber’s opera
1811
Baron de la Motte Fouqué published; translated into English soon after
1812
Brothers Grimm first published in Germany
1823
Selection of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales published for the first time in England, translated into English by Edgar Taylor and illustrated by George Cruikshank
1825
Thomas Crofton Croker, with the help of Thomas Keightley, published
1828
Thomas Keightley published first edition, illustrated by W. H. Brooke (later republished in the 1970s as The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and Other Little People)
1831
Joseph Ritson published
1832
Ballet first performed in London (based on a story by Charles Nodier called Trilby); most popular when danced by Pauline DeVernay in 1836
1834
Thomas Keightley published
1836
Anna Eliza Bray, the first Victorian female folklorist published
1837
Sara Coleridge published
1838 - 1840
Edward Lane’s version published serially
1840
Anna Letitia Barbauld, John Aiken
1842
Robert Browning published
1846
Hans Christian Andersen’s tales translated into English in 5 volumes
1846
Edward Lear published
1848
Giambattista Basile’s work translated into English
1850
Thomas Keightely expanded edition published
1851
John Ruskin published (anonymously)
1854
William Makepeace Thackeray published
1854
Anna Eliza Bray published
1859
George Webbe Dasent translated Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's text into English
1862
Christina Rossetti published
1865
Thomas Hood, illustrated by Gustave Doré
1867
Charles Dickens published
1875
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik published
1877
Villamaria's Fairy Tale book translated into English
1879
Maive Stokes anthologized and published
1883
William Allingham published
1885
Thomas Frederick Crane published and anthologized
1886
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik anthologized and published
1886
Mary De Morgan published
1886
Hallam Tennyson Tennyson published
1888
W.B. Yeats published, introduced, and anthologized
1888
Oscar Wilde published
1888
George MacDonald published
1888
David Thompson published
1889
Andrew Lang published
1889 - 1910
Andrew Lang and Leonora "Blanche" Lang anthologized and published
1890
Joseph Jacobs anthologized and published
1891
Joseph Jacobs anthologized and published
1891
Oscar Wilde published
1891
Ford Maddox Ford published
1892
Joseph Jacobs anthologized and published
1893
Joseph Jacobs anthologized and published
1893
Andrew Lang published
1894
Joseph Jacobs anthologized and published
1894
Straparola’s work translated into English
1897
Mrs. Angus W. Hall anthologized and published
1897
Isabel Bellerby et al. published
1898
Kenneth Grahame published
1899
Juliana Horatia Ewing published
1899
E. Nesbit published
1906
Rudyard Kipling published
1916
Joseph Jacobs anthologized and published
This project is sponsored by the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton University