The Book Of Saints And Heroes – Andrew Lang
A noted non-Catholic writer on pedagogical subjects stated some time ago that if his own religious body had the wealth of story contained in the lives of the saints of the Catholic Church, it would be abundantly supplied with religious literature for children. It is true that the lives of the saints are an inexhaustible treasure-house for all that will interest and stimulate children; and that the same treasure-house is too seldom drawn upon. Its riches are, comparatively speaking, little known to our children or, indeed, to our older folks. A book that taps this vein of Catholic inheritance is: The Book of Saints and Heroes, by Mrs. Lang, and edited by the late Andrew Lang. Needless to say the work is admirably well written, and no child, even though tired, would think of sleep while the story of Jerome and the Lion, or Francis and the Wolf of Agobio, was being read. Here is all that will arouse the imagination, fascinate the mind, and instill that romantic love of heroic deeds which, in turn, is so powerful a stimulus to virtue. The book is most richly and tastefully illustrated with page drawings, many of them beautifully colored. The author has combined legend and history, and has sought to give us an interesting story book.
The Book Of Saints And Heroes
Format: Paperback.
The Book Of Saints And Heroes.
ISBN: 9783849673062.
Available at amazon.com and other venues.
Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books (from Wikipedia):
Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books are a series of twenty-five collections of true and fictional stories for children, published between 1889 and 1913. The best known books of the series are the twelve collections of fairy tales, known as Andrew Lang’s “Coloured” Fairy Books or Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books of Many Colors. In all, the volumes feature 798 stories, besides the 153 poems in The Blue Poetry Book.
Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a Scots poet, novelist, and literary critic. As acknowledged in the prefaces, although Lang himself made most of the selections, his wife and other translators did a large portion of the translating and retelling of the actual stories. Four of the later volumes (from 1908 to 1912) were published as by “Mrs. Lang”.
According to Anita Silvey, “The irony of Lang’s life and work is that although he wrote for a profession—literary criticism; fiction; poems; books and articles on anthropology, mythology, history, and travel … he is best recognized for the works he did not write.”
The twelve Coloured Fairy Books were illustrated by H. J. Ford (Henry Justice Ford), the first two volumes shared with G. P. Jacomb-Hood and Lancelot Speed respectively, the sequels alone. Several other volumes were illustrated by Ford.
(The text of the last section was taken from a Wikipedia entry and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)
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