Finding Nora: The Forgotten Fairy Godmother

If you’ve never heard of Leonora Blanche Alleyne, you’re surely not alone. But you will be richer for knowing her and the magic she cast. So stay a moment, and hear my tale of Nora, the neglected godmother of an enchanted world.

Like me, perhaps your first taste of this world was The Blue Fairy Book, which in 1889 introduced generations to Sleeping Beauty, Rumpelstiltskin, Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel and over 30 more. Or maybe it was the Red Fairy Book, from which you became acquainted with Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, or even the Enchanted Pig?

And if you remember those books, or any of the dozen Rainbow Fairy Books, each with its own distinctive color, you might recall the author whose name adorned the covers. Andrew Lang.  

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A recent edition of the Blue book enthusiastically describes the 37 tales, “narrated in the clear, lively prose for which Lang was famous … His first-rate literary abilities make his collections unmatchable in the English language.”

And they are great stories. As a child I owned several of the rainbow books and used my family’s weekly library trips to devour more. I journeyed through the forests of Germany, the fjords of Scandinavia, and far into the Russian steppes. Later volumes, compiled as the flow of more accessible European tales began to run dry, introduced me to the Bunyip, a magical creature from the Aboriginal people of Australia, and the exotic Snake Prince of the Indian Punjab. Those tales lit a spark of curiosity that I’m sure helped lead me to anthropology, where I made my career. 

But it wasn’t just me. The Fairy Books are a cultural phenomenon, reprinted and repackaged for well over a century. And Lang truly was a literary giant of his era, gaining fame as a journalist, historian, poet and critic. He was one of the Victorian generation of “armchair anthropologists” – scholars who never left home, but wrote monumental works about the customs, folklore and mythology of “primitive” people across the globe. Lang’s fellow-Scot and contemporary, Sir James Frazer, wrote the most celebrated of such tomes – The Golden Bough.

Lang himself wrote hundreds of books and articles about world mythology, as well as commentaries and criticism, original stories, and histories of figures like Mary, Queen of Scots and Homer. And he developed a deep appreciation for the richness of the oral tradition, at a time when many educated people dismissed the old tales as crude and violent.

There’s no doubt some of his sentiments, expressed in his prefaces to the books, grate on us today – like condescending references to “savages.” But his love of ancient myths and tales allowed entry to a world of marvels. As he wrote, “The old fairy tales are really 'full of matter,' and unobtrusively teach the true lessons of our wayfaring in a world of perplexities and obstructions.”

Lang credited fairies with inspiring “the love of books, the magic key that opens the enchanted door.” Much like the Harry Potter series a century later, the rainbow books were a gateway to young readers and earned a permanent place in our cultural heritage.

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And yet in his introduction to the last volume, The Lilac Fairy Book, published in 1910, two years before he died, Lang sounds positively anguished:

"The reputation of having written all the fairy books is 'the burden of an honour unto which I was not born.' It weighs upon and is killing me."

What was the source of his burden? The answer returns us to Leonora Alleyne, known as Nora, who became Mrs. Andrew Lang in April 1875. She shared his love of literature and world cultures, and the couple became a fixture of literary circles in London and Edinburgh. Nora published a history of Russia, which she translated from the French, wrote a novel, Dissolving Views (appropriately now available from Forgotten Books), and reviewed for popular magazines like Saturday Review.   

Together, the Langs believed that the oral tales of Europe, collected by the Brothers Grimm and others, could be reworked to make them accessible to children, while retaining the serious themes that some found disturbing. They began work on The Blue Fairy book, never planning a series. But the spectacular success of the book demanded more, and color after color was added to the rainbow. And though they never had children of their own, their gift remains to this day.

But the end result, as one recent scholar put it, was that for all Andrew’s fame as a writer and scholar, “he is best recognized for the works he did not write." You see, the “clear, lively prose” that delighted young readers was not Andrew’s but Nora’s. Nora, aided by a team of other women writers, located and selected the stories, translated them into English, and wrote them for their young audiences. The original vision may well have been Andrew’s, but in The Green Fairy Book, the third in the series, he finally credits the contribution of “Mrs. Lang.” We now know the rainbow was almost entirely hers.

It would be easy to blame Andrew Lang for keeping Nora in the shadows. But by all accounts, he was a good man, with enlightened views – for his time. The fact that he acknowledged her role at all was quite unusual, and undoubtedly his publisher would have had no interest in naming her. Her neglect was a product of an era when the idea of a “woman of letters” was inconceivable, especially if she were married. A perfect Victorian wife was devoted to advancing her husband. As Andrew himself noted rather wryly, “My part has been that of Adam, according to Mark Twain, in the Garden of Eden. Eve worked, Adam superintended.”

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And what work it was! Leonora’s legacy was profound, inspiring generations of writers with new respect for the richness of the fairy tale tradition. J. R. R. Tolkien acknowledged that he built his mythical world on the Langs’ foundation; without the rainbow books, we might not have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From his privileged study at Oxford, I’m sure he didn’t grasp the extent of his disrespect for Nora when he wrote, "In English none probably rival either the popularity, or the inclusiveness, or the general merits of the 12 books of 12 colours which we owe to Andrew Lang and his wife." 

C.S. Lewis drew on the Fairy Books for his Chronicles of Narnia, and Margaret Atwood, that inspired spinner of fantastical and visionary tales, remembered reading the fairy books as a child, “with wonder.” As did so many of us.  

Scholars have labored to rehabilitate Leonora, and her contribution is now better understood in academic circles. But in the popular imagination she remains deep in her husband’s shadow. The Grimms, Perrault, Anderson -- even Aesop and Oscar Wilde – are all there with Andrew Lang in the pantheon of great fairy tale collectors and authors. Surely we can find a place for Nora?