Andrew Lang
Author biography. Trumpet Publishing House Authors Directory.
Who he was
Andrew Lang was born at Selkirk in the Scottish Borders on March 31, 1844, and died at Banchory on July 20, 1912. He was a scholar of unusual range: a classicist who translated Homer, a historian of Scotland, a folklorist, a poet, a critic, and a working journalist who wrote a great deal to keep the household going.
He is remembered now chiefly for the colored Fairy Books, a series he edited rather than wrote. Much of the actual translation and retelling was done by his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne, and by other women working with them, a fact Lang acknowledged and which is often left out.
Why he wrote it
The Blue Fairy Book appeared in 1889 and was a commercial success nobody expected. Eleven more colors followed over twenty years, gathering tales from across Europe, Asia and beyond and putting them into English a child could read.
The Story of Joan of Arc belongs to the same instinct applied to history rather than folklore. Lang had written seriously about Joan for adults, and here he put the true story into the form he had spent his life perfecting: told plainly, for children, without talking down.
At the time Lang wrote The Story of Joan of Arc, published in 1906, the woman now known as Saint Joan of Arc had not yet been formally canonized. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized on May 16, 1920, eight years after Lang's death. His title therefore reflects the historical moment in which he wrote, before her formal recognition as a saint by the Catholic Church.
The book we publish, and why
We publish The Story of Joan of Arc in hardcover.
What makes it worth a child's time is that it is not a fairy tale, and Lang does not let the reader forget it. A farm girl of about seventeen, who could not read, left her village, convinced a court and then an army, lifted a siege, and was burned four years later by men who called themselves churchmen. All of it happened, and the trial record survives.
The benefit is a particular kind of courage: the sort that does not come from rank, strength, training or permission. Children meet someone their own size who did something enormous, and who was not rescued at the end.
How to read it with a child
Read aloud from about eight, independently from about ten. It is a true story with a hard ending, and that raises the age a little compared with the fairy tales.
Decide in advance how you will handle the burning, because a child will ask and the book does not hide it. The useful framing is the one the history supports: she was condemned by a political trial, and the same church that killed her later overturned the verdict and eventually canonized her. Children find that sequence easier to carry than a simple account of evil winning.
The question afterward is the one that transfers: who believed her, and what made them believe her, given everything about her said they should not.
Pair it with
- The Junior Genius Method, our approach of Read, Notice, Write, Recite, Remember, Question, Apply. The Question stage carries most of the weight here, because the book raises more than it settles.
- Howard Pyle, The Story of King Arthur, for the difference between a code of chivalry imagined and a girl who actually lived one.
- Plutarch, Parallel Lives, for an older child or the parent: the same business of reading a life for what made it hold.
His principal works
He published well over a hundred volumes. The ones most read:
- The Fairy Books, 1889 to 1910. Twelve volumes, beginning with the Blue and ending with the Lilac.
- Custom and Myth, 1884, and Myth, Ritual and Religion, 1887. His folklore scholarship.
- Translations of Homer: the Odyssey with S.H. Butcher, 1879, and the Iliad with Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers, 1883.
- A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, four volumes, 1900 to 1907.
- The Maid of France, 1908. His serious study of Joan of Arc, written for adults.
- The Story of Joan of Arc, 1906, written for children.
- The Red True Story Book, 1895, and companion volumes of true stories told for children.
General reference on Andrew Lang. External links open outside Trumpet Publishing House.
Our editions
This collection grows as further editions and formats are added, so it is worth returning to.
All Trumpet editions by Andrew Lang