In eighteenth century France, Charles Perrault rescued from the oral tradition fairy tales that are known and loved even today by virtually all children in the West. Angela Carter came across Perrault's work and set out to adapt the stories for modern readers of English. In breathing new life into these classic fables, she produced versions that live on as classics in their own right, marked as much by her signature wit, irony, and subversiveness as they are by the qualities that have made them universally appealing for centuries.