The Langs' Fairy Books

The Langs' Fairy Books are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang and Leonora Blanche Lang, a married couple. The best known books of the series are the 12 collections of fairy tales also 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.

Leonora Blanche Lang (1851–1933), known to her family and friends as Nora, was an English author, editor, and translator. She assumed editorial control of the series in the 1890s, while her husband, Andrew Lang (1844–1912), a Scottish poet, novelist, and literary critic, edited the series and wrote prefaces for its entire run.

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 authorship and translation of the Coloured Fairy Books is often incorrectly attributed to Andrew Lang alone. Nora is not named on the front cover or spines of any of the Coloured Fairy Books, which all tout Andrew as their editor. However, as Andrew acknowledges in a preface to The Lilac Fairy Book (1910), "The fairy books have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other languages."

The 12 Coloured Fairy Books were illustrated by Henry Justice Ford, with credit for the first two volumes shared by George Percy Jacomb-Hood and Lancelot Speed, respectively.