Classic Tales and Fables

April 1, 2008 9:41 AM

Over 2000 classic tales and fables including Aesop's Fables, Bulfinch's Mythology, Indian "Why" Stories, tales by Oscar Wilde, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum and Harriet Beecher Stowe and stories about Abraham Lincoln, Robin Hood and Baron Munchausen. And more! The folk and fairytale collection is particularly rich, with hundreds of stories from all over the world.
posted by Kattullus (15 comments total)

Thanks, Kattullus, great find.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:44 AM on April 1, 2008

Oh my goodness, this is amazing! Thank you so much!
posted by LeeJay at 9:55 AM on April 1, 2008

This is a great resource, thanks!
posted by amyms at 10:05 AM on April 1, 2008

This is really awesome. My library has the "fabulous" books all on a separate shelf, which is nice, but organized by author which is more or less useless if I want to find "a Paul Bunyan story". Now I can print these out to read to the kids.
posted by DU at 10:09 AM on April 1, 2008

Wow, thanks.
posted by salvia at 10:25 AM on April 1, 2008

Thanks, Kattullus; nice. Was wondering what the hell to do today while I'm at work.
posted by heyho at 11:12 AM on April 1, 2008

Awesome. Just awesome.
Bests on how long before Disney tries to shut the site down, claiming copyright on certain characters and "properties"?
posted by asfuller at 11:33 AM on April 1, 2008

Thumbs up. Was looking for easy kid-to-sleep material the other night, could've used this then. (He currently falls asleep listening to Bill Cosby or Nirvana.)
posted by not_on_display at 12:30 PM on April 1, 2008

Needs more pictures. Beatrix Potter without pictures is just wrong.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:41 PM on April 1, 2008

Very nice.
posted by caddis at 2:18 PM on April 1, 2008

I don't know why anyone would read plain-text / HTML when the original illustrated versions are freely available online. I mean, the layout and illustrations are a big part of what made classic fairy-tale books so great.

Example: Beatrix Potter ("Flip Book" to view)

Google Books also has them. So do many other sites. Even if you want plain text, how is this site any different from Gutenberg (which is most likely where it came from to begin with). I don't mean to be so negative about it but there are 100s of sites that scrape content from Gutenberg - many with adds but not in this case.
posted by stbalbach at 2:32 PM on April 1, 2008

Well, the way I like to think of places like that is that they act as filters for the available information. For instance, I never would have thought to flit between, say, Australian aboriginal tales, Oscar Wilde, Aesop and Baron Munchausen. It's also a ready-made collection of a certain type of text.
posted by Kattullus at 4:21 PM on April 1, 2008

This is great - bookmarked. Thanks!
posted by mkim at 6:37 PM on April 1, 2008

Yes, definitely bookmark material. Thank you, Kattullus. (If I wasn't so much of a grasshopper, I would have my bookmarks much better organized.)
posted by LeLiLo at 8:14 PM on April 2, 2008

I am always on the lookout for new sites on fables and folktales.
I use Folktexts a great deal, which divides folktales by subject matter. It also has an extensive Germanic folktale section.
I'm happy to add Rick Walton's site to my bookmarks, though. This is fantastic.
posted by sandraregina at 10:59 AM on April 25, 2008