Collection: Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang, 1844 to 1912, was a Scottish scholar, poet, folklorist and critic, best remembered for gathering fairy tales from across the world into colored volumes so ordinary children could have them. The scholarship was serious. The point of it was access.

He turned the same care on a true story. In The Story of Joan of Arc, his Joan is a farm girl who heard a calling, convinced a court, led an army, was captured, tried and burned, all before she was twenty. Lang does not inflate her and does not make her safe. He lets the facts carry it.

It is the clearest kind of courage, because it comes from no rank and no advantage at all. Children meet someone their own size who did something enormous.